


A Wand With Sixteen Strings

by Ankaret



Series: A Wand With Sixteen Strings [1]
Category: Harry Potter - Rowling, Marlow series - Forest
Genre: Crossover, Gen, aw16siverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-13
Updated: 2009-12-13
Packaged: 2017-10-04 09:37:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 21,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ankaret/pseuds/Ankaret
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nicola and Lawrie Marlow go to Hogwarts. 'We've simply got to be credits to the family.  You can't imagine what they'd say if we ended up in Hufflepuff...'</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was the first time Lawrie Marlow had met another set of identical twins, and she still wasn't sure whether she felt charmed or affronted. She leaned back against the wall of the train corridor, enjoying the rattle of the carriage's shell against her back, and let her twin Nicola do the talking whilst she made her decision.

"... the kind of reputations they've got. Kay's awfully clever, and Rowan can play any position she puts her mind to, and Ann's terribly good at Care of Magical Creatures, and Ginty..."

"Ginny?" said a tall red-headed boy in a rather battered robe, looking down at them in a kindly but disinterested way as he squeezed past them on his way down the corridor.

"_Ginty_ \- well, even Ginty's pretty good at Quidditch and people like her a lot, and last year Peter enchanted a bicycle and it was so funny when it..." Nicola tailed off. Lawrie regarded her with a sisterly eye, knowing as well as Nicola did that what their brother Peter mostly specialised in was grimly bestriding broomsticks as if he thought no one could _tell_ he was scared of heights.

"And have you got to do all that too?" asked the twin with the blue hairclip, in a way that reminded Lawrie, slightly and unpleasantly, of her sister Rowan. Lawrie stored that particular expression away to try sometime; not on Rowan, who would be squashing in the extreme, but possibly on Ginty, or Ann...

It was a pity; if they'd all become friends, two sets of twins, it would have been exactly like something out of a school story and there would have been cases of mistaken identity and brave refusal to sneak and probably rescues from clifftops and daring broom-rides by moonlight. Lawrie stuck her chin out, practicing being brave in the face of what was practically crushing disappointment.

Still, the twin with the pink hairclip didn't seem so bad, even if she had spent all that time talking enthusiastically with Nicola about brothers who did adventurous things abroad in the service of the Ministry of Magic. Lawrie liked adventures as much as anybody - at least, she always told herself she did, because it would be so awful to be the other sort of person - but from some of the things Giles said, some of the things he had run into hadn't been adventurous at all. Lawrie hugged herself across the chest of her handed-down robes. Some of them had sounded _awful_, and made her insides feel collapsed and nasty for weeks.

"... I mean, honestly, if it wasn't for all the others going through this, I'd have thought it was all _cracked_," Nicola was saying. "I mean, _wands_ and stuff, and shouting things in really bad Latin, and one of Kay's friends' head appeared once in the _fireplace_ talking about Quidditch..."

"Margaret Jessop," said Lawrie, and hugged her arms closer across her chest.

"Oh, Margaret Jessop." The twin with the blue hairclip looked a bit more friendly.

Padma, that was her name, though Lawrie had thought she said Tadpole at first because of the noise of the train and asked (in her _friendliest way_, Lawrie added to herself, considering feeling hurt again) whether it was because they came at the tail-end of their family too. "Everyone says she's _bound_ to be snapped up by the Holyhead Harpies once she leaves school. She already trains with them in the holidays. None of the other Houses stand a chance against Ravenclaw with her as one of their Chasers. I really hope I get Sorted into Ravenclaw."

Lawrie found herself hoping for a moment that she and Nicola would be in Ravenclaw too, though not because of Padma Patil. Her mind darted ahead to a vision of herself, the youngest Ravenclaw Seeker ever, snatching the Golden Snitch out from under the noses of her affronted sisters Rowan and Ginty.

"Oh, but we're _bound_ to be in Gryffindor," Nicola was saying earnestly. "All the others have been, and Giles was a Prefect and Rowan's bound to be and so's Ann, and Kay's head girl, and..."

People in the crowd around the Quidditch pitch were saying quite distinctly that the two youngest Marlows outshone all their sisters and brothers put together. Lawrie was sliding off her broom looking pleased, proud and nobly self-conscious. Margaret was striding up to her, tall and dark in her blue Quidditch robes, and clapping her on the shoulder...

"You might not be in the same House," said the other twin, Parvati, earnestly. "I don't know whether Padma and I will be."

Lawrie felt as if she had just slid down something slippery and cold on her bare stomach. "Not in the same House?" she said in a small hunted voice. "But we _have_ to be in Gryffindor - I mean, everyone is, even Ginty, and no one thinks she's a bit brave. We've simply got to be credits to the family. You can't imagine what they'd say if we ended up in Hufflepuff..."


	2. Chapter 2

Lawrie steadfastly didn't look at Nicola, and Nicola steadfastly didn't look at Lawrie. Both of them were separately feeling that standing here listening to a hat singing doggerel was utterly unendurable. If it had been a firing squad, Lawrie thought, she could at least have been Mata Hari up until the end. She couldn't think of anyone who'd died of being embarrassed by a hat.

Nicola was standing next to her looking competently bored, though Lawrie could tell from her expression that she was thinking, _this time tomorrow it'll all be over_. It was a bromide that Lawrie had never found much of a comfort. She poked her sister in the side with a finger. "Swap places?"

"What?" Nicola mouthed, looking brightly blue-eyed and hawklike and angry, though not as hawklike as the girl who stood at almost the far end of the line with her dark brows drawn concentratingly down.

"Swap _places_ with me," begged Lawrie. She had always been happy that L. Marlow came before N. Marlow if it was a matter of getting a less dog-eared book, or a choice of milk-bottles at playtime. Now, however, it loomed over her, a cruel conspiracy on the part of her parents, Hogwarts and all hats.

"Don't be an idiot. They call out the names."

Her eyes beginning to swim with tears, Lawrie stared out at the tables. The girl one place away on the other side, a practical Scots-looking person, looked sympathetic, but Lawrie wasn't looking.

The people at the tables looked unsympathetically merry. The knot of people sitting around Ginty at the Gryffindor table looked particularly bright-eyed and entertained, as did a group around a thin, graceful brown-haired person at the Ravenclaw table. Lawrie began to notice how the tears in her eyes made the floating candles bob together into a shining white mist over the tables. If she squinched her eyes a bit, the tables themselves became blurs of red or yellow or green or blue...

"Bulstrode, Millicent!" called a rather magnificent Scots voice.

"SLYTHERIN!"

"Burnett, Sarah!"

"GRYFFINDOR!"

Jolted out of her thoughts, Lawrie realised that the first few people had already been Sorted. She darted a glance down the line, trying to work out how many there were to go. The boy next to her gave her an assessing look. He was pale and blue-eyed and looked rather like a Marlow himself. He was smiling to himself and rocking gently back and forth on his heels, as if he found this no more alarming than waiting at a bus stop. Lawrie took heart. Actually, she thought, grinning privately to herself, if he came from an old wizarding family he'd probably find a bus stop a lot more disconcerting...

She felt Nicola tense with dislike beside her, and realised that over at the Gryffindor table Ann was giving them one of her _special_ smiles as she clapped the new arrival. Lawrie felt that she could use a bit of babying from Ann at a time like this, and was inclined to resent the way her sister was making room for Sally Burnett.

Peter was talking very loudly to what Lawrie was dismayed to recognise as yet another pair of twins. These ones were boys with red hair. Peter's face looked suspiciously shiny and white, like one of the large blancmanges on the table. Lawrie wondered disgustedly what _he_ thought he had to look horripilated about. All of this was over for him, after all, he was a second-year and knew everything and everybody.

She didn't much like the look of the twins, either, but then Peter had horrible taste in friends. There had been one who had cursed the smaller bathroom of their London house so that there was never any hot water there ever after, and another who was always suspected of setting small fires.

"Grigson, Sandra!"

"GRYFFINDOR!"

"Hopkins, Margaret!"

"RAVENCLAW!"

"Keith, Thalia!"

"SLYTHERIN!"

"Longbottom, Neville!"

The hat was taking forever to decide over a lumpy small boy with a face like a miserably determined parsnip. Finally it shouted 'GRYFFINDOR!'.

Neville Longbottom bolted for the Gryffindor table still wearing the Hat. Lawrie took refuge in entirely premature relief. If the Hat wasn't on the chair, then none of the rest of them _could_ be Sorted, and Rowan or someone would have a quiet word with someone and the someone would say, Oh yes, the twins belong in Gryffindor...

Neville hurried back to replace the hat. So much for that, then. The next two people in line were Sorted so fast Lawrie barely had time to compose her face into the right expression and to squeeze Nicola's silently offered hand; and then...

"Marlow, Lawrence!"

The hat settled over her eyes. It was almost comforting, like pulling the covers over her eyes when she was lying in bed.

"H'm," said a scratchy voice. "Plenty of talent there, but no ambition."

Lawrie thought something indignant. Of _course_ she was ambitious, _naturally_ she was ambitious, they all were. It wasn't _her_ fault Nicola always leapt in first to tell people about how she was going to sail off round the world and fight chimeras and generally keep the world of magic shipshape and tidy. She was just as ambitious as anyone else, and possibly better...

"No, you're not," said the hat placidly. "You assume you're going to get what you want; it's not at all the same thing. Though you still might do well in Slytherin, with that concentrated selfishness..."

Lawrie sat upright, fiercely indignant. She _wasn't_ selfish! It was just that everyone else was older and louder and more self-assured than her, and she was the youngest and always had to run to keep up...

"Selfish," said the hat firmly. "And spoilt. Don't be downhearted, a lot of the greatest wizards were as selfish and spoilt as they come. H'm - no - not Ravenclaw - you've got a good mind in there if you'd use it, but study won't ever be your first love."

Lawrie remembered school reports past, and felt a ripple of laughter across her forehead in return. "H'rumph. Once you find what you're supposed to do in life, you'll be willing to _work_."

Lawrie thought about that. On the whole, she would prefer to have the good things in life fall into her lap without effort, and she often pretended to herself that they _did_.

Still, when it came to something like getting the voice right for a character she was going to play at a fancy dress party - well, she supposed that that _was_ work. She certainly couldn't give anything less than her best. If Ann was going to sit up all night sewing the costume, she thought with a small flicker of amusement, the least she could do was do it justice...

"Yes, well, you do know how to inspire loyalty," said the hat, sounding amused despite itself. "You're loyal yourself in return, though that's probably because you haven't worked out where you end and other people begin. May you be a credit to... HUFFLEPUFF!"

"You mean Gryffindor," said Lawrie to the hat, but it had gone quiet. Lawrie gathered herself up from the stool, looking small and lost, and unable to tell whether the cheers she heard were meant sarcastically or not. She heard Ginty's voice rise with appalling clarity over the din. "I don't believe it. They've put Lawrie in with the Duffers,"

Nicola was already darting forward. Lawrie stared back at her, not at all sure whether at this point a twin counted as an enemy.

"Marlow, _Nicola_," said the Scots witch in a particularly no-nonsense tone of voice.

There was nothing for it but to march over to the Hufflepuff table and take the offered seat next to a girl whose name turned out to be Susan Bones, and to smile back and be welcomed. They seemed to think they had got one over on the Gryffindors. Lawrie decided that it would be best to think that way too, very loudly.

The hat was taking nearly as long over Nicola as it had over Neville Longbottom. Lawrie bit her lip with nervousness and hastily turned it into an impression of one of the Professors, who was wearing an exceptionally ugly purple turban. Susan Bones looked encouraging. Lawrie tried one of the other Professors, though she wasn't quite sure how to turn transparent without practicing it in a mirror first.

"HUFFLEPUFF!" said the hat.

Lawrie breathed again. It was all very well to pretend to be unjustly exiled or otherwise all alone in the world, but she would sooner be all alone in the world with Nicola there as well, thank you very much. She looked across at one Patil twin at the Gryffindor table and one at Ravenclaw and felt an enormous patronising relief.

"_No_," said Ginty. "Both of them?"

Ann made flapping gestures and mouthed something along the lines of _Oh, be quiet, she minds._ Rowan was looking saturnine and Karen disconcerted. Lawrie decided that the best thing was to be loudly bumptious. She considered doing an impression of the Scots witch next but somehow thought better of it.

Nicola arrived, giving the Gryffindor table a disliking look over her shoulder. "I'd far sooner be here than with that giggling mob of Ginty's."

Lawrie, looking at her under her lashes, wasn't sure she meant it, but decided it was best to leave well alone. "At least we get Quidditch with the Ravenclaws, Susan here says," she said, reviving. "D'you think Margaret Jessop might take practices, p'raps? Sometimes?"


	3. Chapter 3

"Well, if that doesn't cure you of trailing your cloak on the floor when you go out for your morning run, nothing will," said Nicola frankly, standing by the window in vest and knickers and looking at the tattered remains of Lawrie's winter cloak (black with silver fastenings). "What _happened_?"

"... buffcase..." muttered Lawrie, drawing patterns on the floor with her foot.

"_What?_ Oh, Lal, don't _cry_ about it..."

"It got bitten off by a staircase," said Susan Bones, who was sitting on the end of her yellow-hung bed competently putting on her socks. "There are a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts, you know..."

"I know, Karen told me,"

"Yes, after you spent all summer standing on one leg next to her asking questions," said Lawrie unkindly, getting her own back. She hadn't been about to cry. She hadn't been about to cry _much_, anyway.

"... and some of them bite. At least you didn't find the one with the step that someone Transfigured into rice pudding in about 1650. Sometimes it forgets and turns back, and you wouldn't believe the _smell_. It got that Slytherin idiot Marie Dobson on Monday."

"I'd sooner rice pudding than this," said Lawrie gloomily. "What am I supposed to do when I need a cloak?"

"I 'spect Ann or Rowan or someone'll get a new cloak and you'll get theirs. Write to Mum about it."

"Can't you say when _you_ write?"

"Oh, _Lal_. Don't be such a baby." Nicola began to pack books and quills efficiently into her satchel. "Ask Liz Collins when she comes back from the bathroom, why don't you? She told me last night she practiced Mending Charms for fun. _Strange_ woman."

Lawrie meditated another _can't you ask_ and then thought better of it. Elizabeth Collins was so inoffensive that even Lawrie couldn't really be alarmed by her, and resembled nothing so much as her own unassuming brindled cat. Nicola, on the other hand, was clearly in a particularly brisk frame of mind this morning. Lawrie looked at her sideways. "What have we got this morning?"

"Flying lessons," said Nicola tightly.

Lawrie stared at her blankly, and then was enlightened. Of _course_. Nick was ratty because she was remembering about Karen's broom. During the holidays Nicola had rescued an old broom of Karen's from the attic, cleaned and polished it, and been visibly disappointed when Rowan told her that first-years weren't allowed their own brooms. Ginty in particular had found it all very amusing. That, Lawrie thought with satisfaction, was it.

If they had been alone in the room she would probably have said something about it, but there were things one didn't discuss with one's sisters even in front of the practical Susan Bones and the meek Elizabeth Collins, who had just come back from the bathroom.

Lawrie tucked _Quidditch Through The Ages_ into her own satchel and felt better. "Flying lessons all morning?"

"No, there's something or other with the Ravenclaws first," said Susan, finishing sharpening one of Lawrie's quills for her in the responsible way that Susan did most things and handing it over. "Are you coming down to breakfast?"

"Oh... yes..." Lawrie found herself suddenly glad of the something-with-the-Ravenclaws, even if it turned out to be History of Magic and crashingly dull; she thought she could do with a pause between breakfast and flying lessons. Actually, she wasn't sure about breakfast in the first place. She followed Susan out.

\--

"Which one's Marie Dobson, anyway?" Lawrie asked Nicola as they sat waiting for the Professor to arrive. The classroom was cold enough to make Lawrie wish uncomfortably that her robes were a bit thicker, and there were pickled animals floating in jars around the walls.

"_You_ remember," said Nicola coldly. "That creature who kept looking over at people and giggling pointedly whenever Millicent Bulstrode said anything."

"The one you had the argument with about who got which matchbox in Transfiguration, you mean."

Nicola wrinkled her nose with dislike. "Yes. Horrible bony object, all sucking-upness and unwashed hair, and I bet treading on that rice pudding step would just make the smell _better_..."

"I see that we are all gathered here," said a cold, soft voice from the doorway; a voice that made Nicola jump in her chair and Lawrie clasp her hands together silently under the desk and store the voice away for future _practice_. "And that someone is already lecturing to us. Miss Marlow, I think? Of Hufflepuff?"

Nicola looked round and crimsoned. Lawrie looked round too.

The Professor was standing in the doorway. He was a sallow man with greasy dark hair. _Bony object_, thought Lawrie, fighting a terrified desire to giggle, _unwashed hair..._

And yet he couldn't have been less like Marie Dobson. Like one of her Cousin Jonathan's hawks, he gave the impression of having gone from swooping movement to compact stillness. Like one of her Cousin Jonathan's hawks, he scared her. She felt horribly like one of those creatures bobbing in a jar; trapped, on show, and as if there was something syrupy and rank filling her mouth and nose. Lawrie swallowed. She had smelt formaldehyde once, when she was very small, and now she remembered vividly how it had smelt in her nose and the back of her throat.

Beside her, Nicola was for once mute. The Professor regarded them both. "Ah... _which_ Miss Marlow of Hufflepuff? And on what subject, precisely, were you discoursing before I arrived?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still not absolutely certain of where Marie Dobson should have been Sorted, but this fitted with the plot.


	4. Chapter 4

"We were talking about Transfiguration," said a clear voice from two desks back. "Apparently you can turn a matchbox into something really foul if you try."

"I don't believe _you_ were talking about anything at all, Miss West, unless you have been using an unauthorised Voice-Exchanging Charm," replied the Professor in a voice like cold black syrup. "A point from Ravenclaw, and kindly attempt to remember in future that this is the Potions Dungeon, and that the school does not to my knowledge possess a Ventriloquism Dungeon. _Much_ as one might be needed."

He settled his pile of books and what Lawrie supposed were Potions ingredients on his desk, and turned to look at Nicola and Lawrie. "Ah, the Misses Marlow. Perhaps you believe that because your sister is Head Girl and Miss West's father was kind enough to pay for the repairs to the Library roof, you have a right to fill the room with your mindless chatter?"

"I..." said Nicola, stopped, took a breath, and continued sturdily. "I wasn't talking to, um, to Miranda. It didn't have anything to do with her. It was just me and Lawrie."

Lawrie blinked indignantly; nice of Nick, she thought, to drag _her_ into it when she'd had nothing to do with the Transfiguration row...

"A point each from Hufflepuff for cheek," Professor Snape opened his register and considered it with distaste. "And another point each for thinking yourselves too far above the Ravenclaw members of your year to so much as speak to them. No doubt Hufflepuff counts many distinguished wizards among its alumni, but neither of you are among them yet."

He considered them mordantly. "In fact, I think it would be best to put an end to your elegant exclusiveness."

Lawrie stared at him rather wildly, wondering whether he was proposing to murder her or merely have her expelled.

She tried to remember what the rest of her family had had to say about Professor Snape. About all she could remember was Ann saying that he _was_ awfully fair really and Rowan remarking thoughtfully that he was the only person she knew who could _consistently_ send Ginty into floods. Since Ginty's infrequent fits of tears always lasted until she had sobbed herself into a headache and then to sleep, this was in no way reassuring.

Nicola poked her in the ribs with an elbow. Lawrie jumped, reflecting that _her_ elbows couldn't possibly be as sharp as that and it wasn't fair. "Um... sorry...?"

"Another two points from Hufflepuff for inattentiveness. Whilst the silent Miss Marlow exchanges places with Goldstein, perhaps the rest of you could take a moment to remember your own names. Otherwise," he regarded the room from his high desk like a particularly disgusted preacher at a lectern, "it will take us until midnight to finish the register, and I will become involved in a demarcation dispute with Professor Sinistra."

Eyes prickling with tears, Lawrie gathered her belongings and traipsed across the room.

Nothing went right for the rest of the lesson. Lawrie's fingers felt hot and clumsy. She managed to crush the stalks of Giant Henshanks she should have been chopping and chop the weasels' teeth she should have crushed. The boy on her other side volunteered that his name was Terry Boot and then relapsed into what Lawrie was disgusted to recognise as exactly the same careful, eyes-averted worriment with which her brother Peter treated tearful females.

"Put that wand away, Macmillan. We wouldn't want you using it to stir your cauldron," snapped a voice at the front of the classroom. Lawrie watched Ernie Macmillan's neck turn boil-red. She looked into her satchel and twitched her own wand to the top, _just in case_.

Nicola was chivvying Anthony Goldstein along briskly. _Their_ cauldron was already producing slightly orange smoke. Lawrie gave Terry Boot a pointed look and jiggled the handle of the cauldron. "I can't light fires under cauldrons," she said firmly. "They spit at me."

"Do you imagine that Boot will be present during your OWL practicals to light the fire under your cauldron for you?" enquired Professor Snape unpleasantly from behind her.

Lawrie jumped and slopped slimy uncooked potion down her sleeve. "Um... n-no, Professor."

Professor Snape gave her the sort of look he might have given a Bubotuber on the sole of his shoe. "No. Would that be _no, Professor, I am far too stupid to take OWLs_, or would it be _no, Professor, I don't expect the rules to be bent for me, since by then my sister Karen will long since have passed her NEWTs and been forgotten and I will have to survive on my own dubious merits_?"

"They _spit_ at me," repeated Lawrie desperately.

"I don't mind, honestly," said Terry Boot, looking embarrassed.

"Helpless femininity is not a virtue, Miss Marlow. Go to the library after this lesson and tell Madam Pince you are to borrow a copy of _One Badger At A Time: The Life Of Helga Hufflepuff_. You can bring me a precis of the first two chapters by tomorrow. You appear incapable of following instructions, but possibly you can learn by example." He turned and stalked away.

Lawrie wondered indignantly how anyone could manage to swirl their robes about so much in a room full of cauldrons and pipettes and alembics and yet never knock anything over, and decided that it was probably some kind of Charm, which was _cheating_.

"That wasn't _too_ bad," said Terry in a desperately bracing voice. "They say he made Clement Selby drink something that burnt a hole in the back of his throat once, and he's talked funny ever since."

"Mmm," said Lawrie darkly.

There was a clanging splash from the front of the classroom. Lawrie realised two things at once; first, that Nicola was livid, and second, that the self-possessed Miranda West of Ravenclaw was doing her best to suppress rather adult-looking laughter.

She looked down, and saw a cauldron lying open-mouthed on the flagstones, a slop of yellowish potion and Nicola's very new wand lying in the midst of it looking horribly drowned.

Lawrie pressed her hands to her mouth, pleasurably affronted. She remembered how, two weeks before term began, they had been dragged into Ollivanders. Lawrie hadn't liked the look of the place at _all_. She had distracted herself by saying loudly that she didn't see any point in having a wand whilst they were at school and there were a lot of rules about what they weren't allowed to do with them, and had fought a rearguard action along the lines of _can't I have a Time-Turner instead_ and _can't I borrow Nick's_ until her mother told her not to be so silly.

Nicola, by contrast, was quietly and fiercely pleased with her new acquisition. Nicola often _was_ that way about very old things or very new things, which Lawrie thought was quite silly as almost everything in life was somewhere in the middle.

The wand would never be the same again, that was certain. The cap at one end had come loose and was letting out a small, sad string of bubbles. Each bubble encased a yellow or black spark. Nicola retrieved the wand with a hand wrapped in the skirts of her robe. "You did that on purpose," she said clearly.

"I didn't. I'm sorry," said Miranda with something disastrously like a smirk. "I honestly didn't expect the cauldron to go slipping out of my fingers like that. Is your wand all right?"

"Can't you _see_ it's not?"

"That will be quite enough," said Professor Snape in a voice that somehow managed to echo despite being quieter than any other voice in the room. "Perhaps you failed to hear me when I said that wands would not be necessary during this lesson. If you are suffering from trouble with your ears, I suggest you go to Madam Pomfrey."

Lawrie let out a silent _ouch_ noise over her fingers. She looked at her own wand, sitting neatly on top of a bag of quills in her open satchel where it would be to hand if she needed it. She should have known Nick would have done exactly the same thing.

"Another point each from Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, and both the Misses Marlow will remain behind after class and help to clean up the mess you have caused." He turned disgustedly on his heel in a swirl of robes. Terry Boot grabbed the cauldron deftly out of Lawrie's hand before she could drop it. Lawrie sat down hard on the bench behind her.

"But it's our first flying lesson after this," said Miranda West in an even more irritatingly grown-up voice that reminded Lawrie of cut glass and tinkling laughter and the cologne smell of her mother's dinner parties.

"Pick up your cauldron, Miss West, and strive to be less officious. Now, if the last five minutes of the lesson might perhaps pass in peace, rather than in a bad imitation of a bear-garden?" The Professor looked around the room, nodded pleasantly at one of the Ravenclaws and strolled over to contemplate a large jar on one of the walls which was labelled, in beautiful copperplate, _Premium Bears' Grease_.

"I'll tell Madam Hooch you're going to be late, shall I?" said Terry Boot.

Lawrie stared at her hands in her lap. It was all going wrong. It wasn't meant to be like this at all.

Terry shook his head, put the cauldron back on the fire and treated her with worried chivalry for the remainder of the lesson.

\--

"That Miranda West," said Nicola savagely as they hurried towards their flying lesson. A crisp small wind blew round the corner of the Gryffindor tower and tugged at their robes. Nicola shoved her hands deeper into her pockets. The air was already full of small figures on brooms, yellow or blue scarves trailing against the paler blue sky. "Treating us like we'd been dropped on our heads at birth, just because we're in Hufflepuff..."

Lawrie shrugged uncomfortably, too taken up with her own worried imaginings to have any opinion about Miranda one way or the other. "I need to go to the Library as well," she said morosely. "Do you think we should do it now, or..."

The tower doorway opened to reveal a slender figure silhouetted against the inner brown darkness, all black robes and red and gold scarf and fair hair like a tall candle. Lawrie blinked at it stupidly, trying to remember what Gryffindor had in the way of a ghost. Nicola had asked Karen and told her, but she hadn't been listening. Whatever it was, it probably wasn't anything like as easy-going as the Fat Friar. Probably more like Peeves, Lawrie thought, stepping unobtrusively behind Nicola.

"You look like a pair of guttersnipes," said the figure dispassionately, stepping out of the dark and resolving itself into their sister Rowan with her arms full of books. "I suppose you're settling in all right, are you? Ann wanted to trot round to the Hufflepuff Tower with tea and biscuits, but I said you were independent souls and you probably couldn't be more thrilled not to have to face us all every evening in the Common Room."

Lawrie was just preparing to explain _all_ her troubles, at luscious and satisfactory length, when Nicola cut her off with a ferocious look. "We're _fine_," said Nicola. "Couldn't be better."

"If you say so," said Rowan with cheerful unconcern. "Not to be prefectly at you or anything, but you shouldn't be strolling about like this during lesson time. Hurry up and go wherever it is you're going, and if you could manage a wash and brush-up on the way it wouldn't go amiss."

Nicola was beginning to explain about the flying lesson when an amused voice interrupted from behind them. "Not to be prefectly? Would that be because _you're not a prefect_, Rowan dear?"

Rowan's smile turned suddenly much more pleasant. Lawrie did not find this reassuring. Her sister looked like a person putting a brave face on having just had their broken collarbone stepped on by a horse. A very _heavy_ horse. Possibly some kind of warhorse. There was a definite hint of sword-and-buckler in Rowan's eyes.

"That's right. Went to McGonagall and told her I wasn't doing it during my OWL year, thank you _very_ much for asking, and I was sure she could find someone else to wipe the noses of the infant young."

"I'm sure it hasn't changed anyone's opinion of you," replied the newcomer with a peculiar little smile. She was lithe and brown-haired and looked as if, when she put herself out to be charming, she might be pretty. At present, Lawrie was astonished to recognise, she was putting herself out to be anything but. To _Rowan_. _Everyone_ liked Rowan...

Except that this girl didn't.

"I should have come to you for advice," said Rowan swiftly. "How _was_ your last cosy little chat with the staff?"

The girl looked as if she had been slapped in the face. It was an _interesting_ face, Lawrie thought intently; all sharp canted lines and high brown eyebrows, it looked as if it belonged on a portrait on a panelled wall, with a smudge of lake and trees at its back...

The girl recovered herself and gave Lawrie a quick, curious smile. "Your small fry look fierce," she observed lightly. "What a good thing they don't teach the Unforgivable Curses to first-years, even if they're all-conquering Marlows."

"You shouldn't make it so easy for us," returned Rowan briefly. "Come along, you two, I'll try and smooth things over with Hooch."

"Who was that?" asked Nicola, sounding thoroughly interested as she bounced along a cobbled cloister at Rowan's elbow.

"Lois Sanger."

"The one you put that curse on when you were duelling about the Quidditch flap?"

"That wasn't precisely how it happened," said Rowan with a look of distaste. "It was all very unnecessary and it _certainly_ doesn't need to be raked up again by the First Years. Understand?"

She looked so unexpectedly serious that they both nodded and trudged after her in silence. Lawrie shaded her eyes and looked upwards as they turned another corner towards the lawn where the flying practice was in session. The others were a very long way up...


	5. Chapter 5

Lawrie sat cross-legged on the hearthrug, staring mournfully into the fireplace. The fireplace was carved to look like the mouth of a yawning badger. It usually looked implausibly jolly and gave the Hufflepuff common room a carnival air. Now it just looked podgily sinister.

The common room was full of chatter which seemed, to Lawrie, expressly designed to grate on her nerves. In one corner Zacharias Smith was holding forth to some friends about how he could tell whether Chocolate Frogs had a rare card in or not by the printing on the outside of the packet. In another some fourth-years were playing a murder mystery board game. One of the pieces kept jumping up and down waving its stubby arms and shouting 'I did it! In the breakfast room! _I pushed him into the Venomous Tentacula_!'

Lawrie's brain pattered back over the events of the flying lesson, trying to make them come right. If only they hadn't been late. If only Madam Hooch, yellow-eyed and abrasive, had not made it quite so clear that she didn't think much of excuses from elder sisters. If only the broom had jumped cleanly into her hand like it was _supposed_ to. If only someone had _explained_ to her what she was supposed to be saying to it, if only Nick hadn't had that far-off, Giles-like look in her eye that said that she would sooner be keelhauled than ask.

At least Nicola finally got her broom into the air. Lawrie hadn't managed that. She gave a hard-done-by sigh. When no one noticed, she did it again, louder.

Maybe Miranda West or somebody had said something squashing to Nicola whilst she was up there, though Lawrie never really believed that Nick or anyone else _minded_ what people said to them to the extent that she herself did. Whatever the cause, Nick had come away from the lesson looking ruffled. She answered all kind enquiries with cross monosyllables and then fled into the toilets.

Hours later, Lawrie's sister still looked unapproachably grim. She was sitting in a squashy yellow brocade armchair on the other side of the common-room with her knees drawn defensively up almost to her chin. She was reading something called _With Sail To The Sea-Serpents_ by Gilderoy Lockhart, though she hadn't turned a page in five minutes.

The wizard on the back cover of the book brushed a flop of golden hair out of his eye and twinkled at Lawrie. She grinned back. Well, if stupid old Hooch wouldn't teach them to fly, she would find someone who _would_. Or perhaps someone who would just teach _her_. Then she could teach Nick, _later_, as a great favour. Lawrie picked up an owl feather that had fallen on the hearthrug and started drawing aimless patterns with it on her arm, liking the feel of the feathers against her skin.

There was a faint, friendly buzz of conversation as the mystery game broke up. The pieces were dropped back into their bag, muttering amongst themselves 'The lead pipe's been lost since 1954, I wish they'd get a new one, it puts the averages out, you know,' and 'I'll give you Venomous Tentacula, you great show-off'.

One of the fourth-years got a radio out. Susan strolled over. Lawrie raised a limp arm to be hauled to her feet, and returned the favour by producing the owl-feather out of her sleeve with a flourish and tickling Susan with it.

"Celestina Warbeck's going to give a talk on the WWN, do you want to listen?"

Lawrie made a face. "No. I can't bear put-on swoopy voices. And I bet she goes on and on in a horrible humble way about her Craft."

"She does a bit," Susan admitted. "Is your sister all right? Marie Dobson said she'd been sick."

Lawrie shrugged, supposing in a muddled way that hanging around in toilets waiting for people to be sick was the point of Marie Dobson's existence. "What was Marie doing in those toilets, anyway? They're the ones no one ever goes into. I thought they were for the staff or something."

"Oh, she says she's got a special friend who lives in there and tells her secrets. You know that _nudging_ way she talks, like she wants everyone to ask her about it. Only nobody did. I think Tim Keith and the other Slytherins were laughing at her."

"Serve her right if they were. _Special friend who lives in the toilet_. It's probably a bar of soap." Lawrie gave a swift little shake of her shoulders, as if dismissing the stale-mackintosh aura of Marie Dobson. "Maybe that's why she never washes."

The fourth-year girl tuned in the radio with an astonishing number of squeaks and groans. Sweeping music filled the air, and a throbbing female voice said "First of all I want to thank each and every one of My Beloved Public..."

Lawrie made sick noises. The fourth-year girl and her friends gave her disliking looks. So did Nicola.

"Come on, let's go to the Library and get that book of yours," offered Susan sensibly. Lawrie bounced along beside her, feeling better by the moment, and explaining her plan for getting extra flying lessons with a number of unnecessary gestures.

Susan nodded capably. "We could ask Cedric Diggory, maybe? Everyone says he flies really well, and he was ever so kind when I asked him about some Herbology I didn't understand. He didn't make me feel stupid or anything."

"Um," said Lawrie, who hadn't actually been thinking of asking another Hufflepuff. It would be so much more impressive to just come back with... with _flying colours_, she thought, secretly delighted at the words' neat precision and feeling the job was already half done.

She didn't think she could face asking a Ravenclaw, either, not after they'd seen her fail this afternoon, and if she asked anyone in Gryffindor it would be sure to get back to the rest of her family. Lawrie, who had felt very jaunty about the idea of Kay or Rowan giving them _special tuition_ so that they could be the youngest members of the Gryffindor Quidditch team ever, found herself very much disliking the prospect of muffing up the simplest thing over and over again under the too-patient eye of Rowan, or worse, Peter.

Not Hufflepuff, not Ravenclaw, not Gryffindor... "Who's that Slytherin boy who's forever talking about how good he is at Quidditch?" she asked Susan as they turned a corner into a shadowy corridor. A suit of armour stopped scratching the back of its helmet with its gauntleted fist and saluted them. Susan saluted gravely back.

"Draco Malfoy," Susan frowned and flipped her long plait over her shoulder. "I'm not certain he'd be the best person to ask. He... Well, if you want _my_ opinion, I think he's had his nose put well and truly out of joint by Harry Potter,"

"Why, what's Harry Potter done?"

Susan blinked. "He's Harry Potter!"

"But that's..." Lawrie waved her arms lavishly about, causing the suit of armour to hide its tasseled polearm behind its back for safe-keeping. "That's like saying Padma's a Hindu goddess because she's named after one..."

"Was she?"

"So she says... or that you know all about the Ministry of Magic because of your aunt working there. It's just... what's the word? Reflected glory,"

Susan stopped in her tracks and gave Lawrie a cautious look. "You have _heard_ of Harry Potter, right? I mean, I know your parents are Muggles, but what with Karen and Ann and the others being witches and wizards, I thought someone would have been sure to tell you..."

"Oh, yes, about how You-Know-Who tried to kill the Potters at a place called Godric's Hollow," said Lawrie airily, "and sob, sob, the mother and father died _ever_ so bravely and hip, hurrah, the little baby lived and that meant You-Know-Who's _power was broken_ though frankly I've never understood how. Bags I the friend who betrayed them if we ever do a play of it. But that's just a story. Like baby Jesus and the manger. It's got nothing to do with the Harry Potter in Gryffindor who hangs around with Peter's friends' brother and that girl with the teeth," She paused, looking at Susan with alert satisfaction. "Well? Has it?"

\--

"Lal, come _out_," came Nicola's bothered voice from outside the safe republic of her sister's bed-curtains. "I think Susan'll go to Madam Pomfrey if you don't. She's really worried."

"Let her," said Lawrie in muffled tones. She blew her nose on a handkerchief she'd found under her pillow. "Did _you_ know?" she asked desperately.

"Well, of course I did. I thought you did. I thought _everyone_... Look, Lal, Hogwarts is the safest place there is. Everyone says so. _Giles_ says so. Safer than Gringotts, even,"

"Gringotts hasn't got Harry Potter in it!"

"Weren't you listening to Susan? You-Know-Who was defeated years ago."

Lawrie sniffed. "Are you sure?"

"Do you want me to go round to Gryffindor and fetch Ann? Would you believe it if _she_ told you?"

Lawrie opened the butter-coloured velvet curtains a cautious few inches and pushed her face through them. "Look. Nick. Don't you think we ought to... well, join the Charms Club and practice hexes and duelling and so on, just in case he _does_ show up?"

"They expel people for duelling."

"They didn't expel Ro. Come _on_, Nick. We can look hexes up in the Library. I have to go there anyway," Lawrie wheedled. "I'll ask Susan instead if you won't, or Padma or Tim Keith or somebody. I'll ask Miranda West."

"Like she'd stoop to poking around looking for hexes with you," said Nicola savagely. "Oh, all _right_. But I'm not sticking around the Charms Club if it turns out to be full of people sticking fairy wings in albums, or any of that babyish stuff."

Lawrie retreated back into the bed and drew the covers up to her chin. She felt quietly pleased with herself. Never mind stupid flying. If You-Know-Who came roaring round the perimeter of Hogwarts she, Lawrence S. Marlow, would be prepared for it. Besides, she thought as sleep began to swallow her from the knees up; Nicola was only cross because she hadn't thought of it first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note to readers who haven't read Antonia Forest; yes, Lawrie really is portrayed as _that_ unobservant and uninformed in canon.


	6. Chapter 6

In the end it was Nicola who went to the Library, since Lawrie was plainly either asleep or so determined to _be_ asleep that any argument would only wake the blameless Elizabeth Collins in the next bed. Equally plainly, it would only be tempting fate to expect Lawrie to do it in the morning.

Nicola frowned, muttered "You _owe_ me, mate," to her sister's upturned shoulder and scruff of pale hair, and picked her way carefully out through the darkened Common Room.

"Late, aren't you, dearie?" asked the portrait who guarded the Common Room, an elderly witch who seemed to be knitting some kind of toad-cosy. "Keep an eye out for Peeves - though he's been patrolling the Charms Corridor all week, and I don't need to tell you not to go _there_, do I?"

Nicola kept a wary eye out for Peeves as she scudded down the corridor. Her luck seemed to be holding; she passed nothing more alarming than a brindled grey cat, disdainfully picking her way along as if she didn't consider the floorboards quite good enough for her august paws. Nicola put a tentative hand down and said "Puss, puss?" but the cat merely yawned, evaded her hand and moved on.

As she hurried down a staircase another thought assailed her; what if the library was shut by now? Her luck held again; a light still burned at the desk, filling the room with brandy-coloured shadows. _Whoo_, thought Nicola expressively and pressed her thumbs together for just one more bit of luck.

For once, the thumbs worked their small magic. Madam Pince, a severe-looking witch, was busy mending books by candlelight, with the help of several bouncy flatworms of cut-off Spellotape. She looked at Nicola over her half-moon spectacles. "Oh, it's you, is it? I've been expecting you. Drat that Severus Snape, as soon as a man knows how to brew a Draught of Living Death he thinks no one else ever needs any beauty sleep."

Nicola shuffled, grinned, and muttered something. Madam Pince frowned at a flapping book cover. "Put your finger there, will you? Well, well, a Marlow, and not in Gryffindor. Though I was always surprised Karen wasn't in Ravenclaw... such a good, _diligent_ girl, not like most of those Gryffindors, little hooligans..."

Nicola lent a finger. The book jumped under her hand, sudden as water. Madam Pince continued to mutter about Ginty's feckless habit of turning over corners to mark her page and Ann's helpful way with a returned books trolley.

"Um... the biography?" said Nicola, reckoning that if things went on this way she'd be here all night. Not that she'd mind, really - the Library was unexpectedly entrancing when it was quiet and dusted with shadows. She couldn't really see herself feeling the same way about the place when it was filled up with the likes of Michael Corner and Anthony Goldstein throwing paper darts or those Gryffindor idiots Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil giggling.

"Just up those steps, past Wizarding Etiquette and not as far as Falconry, Snidgetry and Owling," snapped Madam Pince. "Mind the Etiquette stacks, and just give them a good hard look if they try and loom at you. And don't go putting grubby fingermarks where I've just polished."

Nicola gave the Etiquette stacks an alert look. They didn't seem to be looming at all. Something called _Muggle Manners_ did look rather interesting, though more Gin's kind of thing than hers, maybe... She grabbed the biography, a fat yellow-bound book with a squashy leather cover like a photograph album and an engraved gilt badger doing pressups on the spine.

She paused. Cousin Jon's hawks were rather fab, all gargoyle eyes and proud attentiveness... perhaps she would just have a crafty look into Falconry, Snidgetry and Owling...

There was a horse in the library.

It was standing quite docilely between the high wooden shelves, occasionally giving a mild flick of a dark tail that put the Patils' long plaits to shame. She couldn't see its head. Nicola was struck by the terrible thought that it was grazing from a lower shelf. _Pity it isn't our textbooks_, she thought, stifling a panicky giggle.

To make things even odder, a boy with untidy black hair was standing on some steps a little way down. At least, Nicola assumed he was on steps - he didn't look old enough to be that tall naturally. For a moment the hair made her think it was Harry Potter. She paused, shy - she didn't know him at all, and he was always being bothered by people who thought he was a celebrity or something - and then she realised that he was wearing a _bow_ slung across his bare shoulders.

Maybe he was a ghost from the very early days of Hogwarts. Maybe it was all a prank by Peeves or something. But that looked like the very real back view of a horse...

He looked round and gave her a particularly fierce, yellow-eyed look. The horse's tail twitched again. Nicola retreated, sharpish. Her only experience in that field was with ponies at riding stables, and they had all been jaded types with an attitude to children very similar to that of Professor Snape.

She found herself in Wizarding Etiquette again. She considered taking one of the books down and seeing whether _library, unexpected horse in_ could be found somewhere in an index, possibly between _letters of gloomy apprehension, see Howler_ and _long-distance Apparation, proper dress for_, but decided that the best thing was to tell Madam Pince and never mind if it looked a bit feeble. It wasn't as if anyone was there to see her being feeble, anyway... She skidded round a tall brass lamp and announced breathlessly "There's a horse in the library!"

"Oh, that'll be young Patroklos," said Madam Pince. "Always in and out at night, he is, reading. Professor Dumbledore arranged it. Wanted to give him a library card, but I said it was bad enough my books coming back all crimped at the edges from students reading them in the bath, without letting them out into the Forbidden Forest with no more protection than a Reinforced Binding..."

"The Forbidden Forest?"

"Yes, child, he's a centaur," said Madam Pince briskly. "He was wanting this... it's mended now, take it over to him, will you, Lawrence?"

"But I'm..." Nicola managed not to complete the disastrous sentence _but I'm Nicola_ and had to finish, very lamely, "But I'm not very used to centaurs," An angry blush flamed in her cheeks. Madam Pince was going to think she was a complete idiot...

Well, no, she was going to think _Lawrie_ was a complete idiot. The thought made Nicola feel a bit better. Madam Pince gave her another particularly firm glance over the spectacles.

"_Nonsense_, Lawrence. I don't expect this kind of silliness from a Hufflepuff. You should be ashamed of yourself, a big girl like you behaving like such a baby. Off you go, and don't worry if he Foretells at you. They're always doing that kind of thing, centaurs." She gave a suspicious sniff.

Nicola ducked her head and muttered something. She took possession of the book she was offered, piled it on top of the biography, and scudded off round a _different_ corner in the hope of confronting the centaur's head end. _Gosh_, she thought, pothered, that must have been the boy with the bow on his back. Well, at least he wasn't a ghost. She took a look down at the book he'd wanted.

It did look fairly impressive, actually. It was thicker even than _One Badger At A Time_ and bound in leather with a claw-mark device that looked as if it was branded into the front. The title was embossed in gold; _The Boke Of St. Albans_.

She hurried up the steps and round the corner. "I say, are you Patroklos? Madam Pince said this was yours..."

"Give we the hills our equal prayer!" he unexpectedly declaimed, staring over her shoulder with eyes as yellow as Madam Hooch's in a tanned, sharp-boned face. He carried on reciting poetry. Nicola shuffled from foot to foot, uncertain whether this was a Foretelling and if so what to do about it. He didn't look that much older than Peter or Ginty - _certainly_ no older than Ann - though she had no idea, really, how that worked for centaurs.

Nicola was wondering whether she could just shove the book into his hands and make a swift retreat when he finished, ringingly, "Eternally, entirely free!" and gave her a sudden, engaging grin. "I always like that one, don't you? Aren't you one of Peter Marlow's sisters?"

Nicola explained, hoping Madam Pince wouldn't hear, that she was Nicola but was temporarily being Lawrie because of Professor Snape. By the end of the explanation he seemed to have got over whatever shyness-with-strangers had prompted that first very golden-eyed look. It seemed natural to carry on talking companionably about Cousin Jon's hawks, and hawks in general, and the other occupants of the Forbidden Forest (none of whom Nicola ever fancied meeting, given her druthers).

By the time she scuttled back up the stairs to the dormitory, Nicola found herself feeling, for the first time, a little better about the way Lawrie had chummed up with Susan Bones. Which was odd, as she hadn't let herself notice that she was feeling left out in the first place.

\--

Some weeks later, Lawrie accosted her sisters Ginty and Ann as they were strolling by the lake, and demanded the exact prices of sweets at the sweetshop in Hogsmeade so that she could budget her Sickles and Knuts accordingly.

"Don't forget my commission," said Ginty, lightly teasing.

"What?" said Lawrie. "Why would I be giving you commission? I'm not going with you. I 'spect I'll be going with Nick and Susan, no Gryffindors allowed, thank you _so_ much..."

"Shrieks of silent mirth," said Ginty, sitting down on the grass and spreading her robes rather carefully around her legs.

Ann looked down at her. "You'll catch a chill, you know... Lawrie, is this a... a pretend or something? You know you won't be going to Hogsmeade."

"Why not?"

"First and second years don't," said Ginty.

"Wh-what? But what about the likes of that Margaret Hopkins and Berenice whatsit in Ravenclaw whose families are in Hogsmeade, or Roland Widdershins, or..."

"Who's Roland Widdershins?"

"He's a second-year in ours, his mum clips tickets at the Hogsmeade railway station..."

"He's the one who lost Hufflepuff ten points when Professor Vector caught him trying to sell that smarmy idiot Michael Corner a book called _Date The Witch Of Your Dreams - Through Occlumency!_" said Nicola, strolling up to join them. "Useless git."

"What a pair of pot-hunters you are," said Ginty with disfavour. "I was just telling Lawrie how you won't be going to Hogsmeade, being too young."

"Oh, no, Gin, you've got it wrong."

"Ask Professor Flitwick. Ask anyone. Ask Ann, she told you before I did," Ginty opened a book. "And take Lawrie away, she's going to cry."

"M'not," said Lawrie defiantly. "What are we supposed to do this weekend, then?"

"It'll be fun, honestly," said Ann worriedly. "There'll be a feast in the Great Hall, and probably a Charms Club outing."

"Looking at the pretty flowers at the edge of the Forbidden Forest with some benighted soul whose parents don't care for them stepping off the school premises," glossed Ginty with a yawn. "Lois Sanger, most likely. Doesn't she do Charms Club?"

"I haven't seen her," Nicola frowned and stuffed her hands into the pockets. "But won't she... I mean, because of Rowan..."

"Don't be silly, Nick" said Ann sensibly. "She can't possibly have a row with you simply because she's having one with Rowan. Look, I don't really need to go to Hogsmeade for anything, and I've already been last year, not like Gin. I could just as easily stay behind and..."

"_No_," said Nicola stonily and dragged Lawrie, protesting, away.

"Charms Club outing with Lois Sanger," she said once they were out of earshot of their sisters. "It couldn't be worse."

"Well, I think Ann's right," said Lawrie. She leaned against a tree and producing a bag with two Fizzing Whizzbees left in it. She inspected them narrowly, looking for the bigger of the two, before passing the bag to her twin. "Besides, I bet she'll buy us sweets if we ask."

"Toothflossing Stringmints, or something else wholesome," said Nicola, glowering.

Lawrie leaned back against the tree, twined one leg back against the trunk and smiled winningly. "If _I_ was keeping an eye on my arch-enemy's sisters, I'd be specially nice, just to be annoying."

"I bet you would, too," said Nicola, crumpling the bag and throwing it at her twin. "_Bah_."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poetry quoted is from Emily Bronte's _And like myself lone, wholly lone_.


	7. Chapter 7

Lawrie strolled along at the back of the Charms Club outing, smiling to herself and sucking a blade of grass. She was finding it unexpectedly engaging to be out in the sun during what felt like lesson hours. Still, somehow she wished Susan were here, and not off in one of the towers having a clarinet lesson with Magister Reed, who taught Muggle Studies.

Somehow, also, she didn't want to be bouncing along in the thick of things like Nicola. Lawrie frowned at her twin, who was practicing her new-taught skill at levitating things under the more or less benevolent eye of Penelope Clearwater. At least, Lawrie supposed she was still levitating things. It was a bit hard to tell from the back.

Perhaps Nicola had moved on to something else that she thought would come in handy when she was off charming lamias and counterhexing buried sea-chests, or whatever it was Nicola planned to do when she left Hogwarts. Lawrie shoved her hands into her pockets. It wasn't that she objected to the lamias or the sea-chests, though she would just as soon stay home and hear about them from Nicola; it was the way that Penelope and Jill Dorny and some of the others were so plainly _being kind to the little ones_. Lawrie watched Adrian Pucey patiently untangling something revolting that Marie Dobson had done to a piece of string. She wriggled dislikingly.

Far better to mooch along at the back at her own unhurried pace. If she half-closed her eyes a patch of darker grass could be a dragon's footprint instead, as Professor Sprout would no doubt dampingly tell her, of being something to do with phosphates. Ah yes, thought Lawrie, being the great wizarding detective Lawrencius Marlovius, a Norwegian Ridgeback, I'd stake my reputation on it, the claw-marks are _exceedingly_ characteristic...

"Do keep up!" called Jill bossily. Lawrie scowled and walked even slower. She looked at a slim back and a bright brown head further up. _Lois_ didn't fuss. Lois, in fact, had turned out to be anything but the ogre Rowan had described.

_Lois_, Lawrie thought confusedly, transferring some of her own vehemence to the absent Rowan in a way that her sister would have found quite incomprehensible, had been _persecuted_. Which was unfair, when she had a low, flexible voice that could make the most footling Charm sound like it was steeped in all the rich tradition of magic like a fruitcake in brandy, and when she could fly a broom with an edge-of-the-nerves flamboyance that made Rowan just look _steady_. She was plainly a _much_ more admirable character than _any_ older sister could possibly hope to appreciate...

"Don't dawdle, you," called Adrian Pucey. "Now, everyone, stay away from the edge of the Forest. There's things in there that eat ickle Firsties and spit back their bones."

Lawrie considered. She didn't like Adrian. She felt an almost Nicola-like prickle of impending adventure.

She looked at the Forest. It looked quite safe and welcoming, with the autumn leaves bright on the trees, and a perfect ring of red-capped mushrooms waiting enticingly just inside the treeline. Of course there were rules against going in there, but _rules_, Lawrie thought largely, were feeble things like _no running in the corridors_. She couldn't get hurt from breaking a _rule_. She would be safe as houses in the Forest, and she could leave a trail of crumbs or scraps of paper or something, and then Lois would come and rescue her and _then_, Lawrie thought, making it fit together triumphantly in her head, Lois' foul parents would let her go to Hogsmeade. And it would all be thanks to Lawrence S. Marlow.

It would be better if it was Lawrie rescuing Lois, but she couldn't think of any way of arranging it that didn't involve raging rivers or runaway Hippogriffs, neither of which were exactly on tap at present.

Lawrie grinned doggishly and darted into the trees; where she leaned against a trunk, and put out her small pink tongue at Adrian Pucey's large back.

\--

Lawrie was hiding in a bush. She had been crying for such a long time that now all that were left were a convulsive heave in her chest that sounded like the left-overs of whooping cough, and eyeballs that felt like boiled gooseberries. She couldn't remember ever feeling so scared. Of course, she had been frightened of things before, but that was babyish business compared to this.

She was going to die. She knew it with a sick terrible certainty that slithered about in her innards. Something was going to come along and eat her. Something worse than the things she had already run away from, and got herself a torn robe and a turned ankle in the process. Now she couldn't run any more. She could only sit here in a tight small huddle of misery and wait for it all to be over.

And it was getting dark.

And there wasn't even the hope that Lois or anyone else would come to rescue her, because some nasty little magical creature with stick limbs and a face like a contorted oak-apple had been throwing crumbs and bits of screwed-up paper at her for the last ten minutes. Another one hit her stingingly on the cheekbone. Lawrie gave a howl of misery and buried her head between her scraped knees. She'd thought she'd heard quick light human footsteps earlier, but they had gone away, and she hadn't dared call out in case it wasn't anyone human after all.

There was a crashing sound in the bushes.

It was coming to eat her. She knew it. She wasn't sure what it was, but it sounded as if it had far too many legs. Lawrie pulled her wand out, though she didn't know what she was going to do with it. Her hands felt clumsy, mittened with sweat and fright. She dropped the wand into her lap. This was the end of it. She would manage to curse her own legs off or something, and then the beast would come lapping horribly after the slick remains...

"Lal!" shrieked something that sounded like her sister Nicola's voice. "There you are - hurry, get up onto Patroklos' back..."

Lawrie's heart banged in double-time. "I've had Tales of the Greeks read to me, same as you," she shouted with wholly synthetic scorn. "I know you're just some h-horrible magic beast _pretending_ to be Nicola."

"Then you shouldn't give away your position, should you?" said a boy's voice. It sounded deeper than it ought, and full of jollity and scorn mixed, as if - Lawrie was affronted to realise - as if he was talking to a particularly stupid shying pony.

She found herself grabbed out of the bush by thin, surprisingly strong brown arms. Twigs scraped her arms. She just about managed to grab up her wand out of the pooled skirts of her robe. Everything turned about her - the trees, Nicola's face, a weird impression of the muscles of someone's side and chest turning in a way they shouldn't be able to.

She was on the back of a centaur. She could feel the barrel of his ribcage - his _other_ ribcage - familiar and horselike between her legs. She looked at his shoulder-blades, which were freckled like a brown egg, and at the dark coat that perplexingly blurred into dark hair somewhere along his knobbled backbone. He looked bigger all over than a human, but still somehow boy-shaped rather than fully grown. She scrambled herself into a better position, hoping she wasn't hurting him.

"You look a mess," said Nicola detachedly. "There's snot all down your chin. This is Patroklos."

In the trees, something chittered.

Lawrie looked round and saw cold reflecting eyes in far too great a number for comfort. "Stupefy!" she shrieked, waggling her wand in what she hoped was the correct pattern.

Patroklos reared up. The world tilted again. Nicola grabbed hold of Lawrie's waist with thin strong fingers. The dark canopy of the trees lifted and plunged above them.

Whatever was in the bushes burst out of them, not half as stupefied as Lawrie had hoped. She had a dim impression of scorpion tail and scuttling insectile legs. Then all she could do was cling to Patroklos - cripes, _what_ a way to be introduced - and hope that four legs could outrun however many that thing had, at least in the short term.

By the time Lawrie opened her eyes again they were _not_, as she had hoped, on one of the Hogwarts lawns, but somewhere else in the Forest. It smelt loamy and cold, with an overtone of something that might have been acid, or blood. The last of the twilight lit a sombre glade.

There were more centaurs there. And they didn't look pleased to see Nick and Lawrie at all.

\--

"Honestly, it was just like the Entmoot in The Lord Of The Rings, only much scarier," said Nicola later, waving her arms descriptively. Lawrie thought detachedly that Professor Sprout and Professor Flitwick didn't look half as charmed as they might by Nicola's enthusiastic description, and that being eaten by beasties might well have been the better option. She wished Professor Sprout didn't look so _disappointed_. As for Professor Flitwick, he had a remarkable knack of looking down at a person whilst simultaneously looking up at them.

"But eventually this uncle of Patroklos' talked them round, though they said that if any more humans venture into the Forbidden Forest again..." Nicola skipped a beat, swallowed, and went on, "And then Hagrid turned up with Fang and I thought we really had had it, but maybe they don't count him as human or something. The centaurs said a lot of things about the stars as well, but I didn't really follow that bit."

"I dare say they did," said Professor Flitwick in kind but very grave tones. "Now. Lois. Am I to understand that when you realised Lawrence was missing you sent Nicola after her? Another first-year? And you didn't think to inform me, or Professor Sprout, or another member of staff?"

Lois Sanger pressed one chilled hand against the other for comfort. She hadn't realised how cold it could be in the warmth of Professor Flitwick's book-filled study.

No use, she supposed, to explain that nothing had gone right since the beginning of this, her OWL year. Professor Snape had unexpectedly started marking everything to a far harsher standard than she was accustomed to. She had _stopped understanding_ Arithmancy somewhere around Melodramatic Equations and couldn't bring herself to ask, supposing (incorrectly, as it happened) that everyone else in the class would gloat at her downfall. Everything else had fallen out of kilter like books falling off a shelf.

Only that morning, she had received an essay on Muggle transport back from Magister Reed marked _Fundamentally flawed. See me_ and then Professor Trelawney had met her on the stairs and asked her if she knew she had a spot coming right above her third eye, and things had piled up and toppled her forward from there. She'd hoped to free up the time to talk to the little ones on the Charms outing, but it hadn't happened...

"I was revising my Charms," she half-explained weakly. "I needed Penelope to practice with. I thought they'd gone off with Adrian..."

Professor Flitwick frowned. Lois, as she was prone to do, saw disaster gape in front of her.

And then she saw, shining perilously bright, how it _could_ have been. Nicola rushing up to her saying something about Lawrie being lost, her own irritated unwillingness to drop what she was doing, particularly at the behest of a miniature Rowan Marlow, the easy temptation of letting the wretched child run off again...

She looked from Professor Flitwick to Professor Sprout, consciously clear-eyed. "I - I'm sorry, no, that wasn't how it was. I don't understand. I didn't send Nicola. I'd asked Jill and Adrian if they'd take the first-years through some Cheering Charms whilst I got on with my revision."

"You didn't send her?" asked Professor Sprout heavily. "So you're saying Nicola was lying?"

"No - I don't know. She did shout something at me as she went - something about hide-and-seek, I think - and I said something like Don't go near the Forest then. And then she ran off."

Lois' voice came to a pattering halt. It was all too plausible, she thought with a detached, horrible fascination, before it settled in her head as _the way it was_.

Professor Flitwick frowned. "Penelope?"

Penelope gave him the friendly smile of someone who liked and trusted her Head of House and had a clear conscience. "I'm sorry, Professor. We were doing Switching Spells. My ears were on either side of my kneecap. I didn't hear what any of them said. Nicola came running up and shouted something, and then she went off again." She turned the smile on Nicola, who stared back wooden-faced. "I'm really sorry. There was another first-year about, though, that rather plain child in Slytherin. Maisie something, I think?"

"Marie Dobson," said Professor Sprout with a frown. "I'll go and ask Severus if we can borrow her. It's clear nothing's going to be sorted out otherwise."

Marie arrived in the company of Millicent, who was briskly told to wait outside. Deprived of her friend, Marie also seemed to be deprived of most of her self-righteousness; she stood there, stolidly unhappy on the hearthrug, whilst matters were explained to her, and plainly did not take in a thing.

"So, Marie," said Professor Flitwick kindly. "What did you see happen?"

Marie looked to and fro uneasily. She was caught between a senior and her own age-mates, and life had taught her not to expect much mercy from either. She made her choice.

"It was like Lois said," she said, too quickly, in a thick voice like the beginnings of a cold. "Hide and seek. I... I didn't want to play..."

"Are you sure? You don't want to explain things in your own words?" asked Professor Sprout, offering her tea and a biscuit. "No one's accusing you of anything, Marie. We just want to get to the roots of things, that's all."

Marie looked hunted. "Can't I have Millicent in here?"

"I don't think it's Millicent's business. Would you like me to call Professor Snape?"

But Marie, plainly, wouldn't; and equally plainly, wasn't going to come out with anything useful. Professor Sprout frowned. "Well. Off you go. You too, Penelope, I don't think you have anything else to add?"

"No, Professor Sprout," said Penelope properly. "I really am sorry. Come along, Marie." She gave Nicola and Lawrie a disappointed look and Lois a quick smile, and retreated.

"Do you want to say anything else?" Professor Sprout asked Nicola and Lawrie. Lawrie shook her head, trying desperately not to cry. Nicola only managed vague scraps, and a glare that Lois wasn't taking delivery of.

"Well now. This is a sorry affair. Fifty points from Hufflepuff, and there goes our chance at the House Cup," said Professor Sprout sorrowfully. "I'll leave you with Lois, Filius. Come along, Nicola and Lawrence."

Lawrie wished she could stop her feet moving, wished she could say _that isn't how it was, Nicola wouldn't have said hide-and-seek_; but just at that point, she didn't feel she could say anything at all.

\--

After breakfast the next day one of the Gryffindors came up to talk to them. Nicola looked at her narrowly, evidently suspecting some kind of leg-pull, probably originating with Ginty.

Lawrie recognised the girl by her bushy hair and general air of academic bumptiousness; and since she, unlike Nicola, had no particular reason to compete with Hermione for top marks in classes, gave her a friendly smile. "'Lo, Hermione."

"You were very lucky Professor Quirrell noticed you using your wand all the way out in the Forest, and sent Hagrid," said Hermione, smiling hopefully, as if she wanted to be friendly but didn't know quite how. "Wand recognition's a very specialised art, you know. I wasn't sure about Professor Quirrell, but he must be very perceptive."

"Yeah, eyes in the back of his head," said Ron Weasley scornfully, coming up to join them.

"All competent teachers have eyes in the backs of their heads, Weasley," remarked Professor Snape as he drifted by and turned a saturnine eye on the great hourglasses that showed House points. "And, evidently, some not-so-competent teachers, too." Apparently pleased to see Hufflepuff's lead over Slytherin destroyed, he nodded to them and swept onward.

"He's really unfair to Professor Quirrell," said Hermione indignantly.

"He's really unfair to everyone, the git," said Ron moodily. "He's even unfair to Malfoy - he gives him decent marks."

Not seeing any real point in getting involved in the ongoing bickering between Gryffindor and Slytherin, the twins smiled politely and made their exit.

The next day was Hallowe'en proper. The entire castle smelt of baking pumpkin, not a smell Lawrie had ever liked. "We only have to eat the stuff because such pots of it get scooped out of the lanterns," she complained, leaning across Nicola's desk. "We're not _American_ witches. Why can't we have - oh, what was that thing Ernie was droning on about last night in the common room? The authentic alternative."

"The authentic alternative's turnip lanterns," said Nicola, grinning and poking Lawrie in the ribs with her wand, which spat a sad yellow spark in a bubble. "Fancy a feast consisting entirely of bashed neeps, do you?"

"I like turnips," said Susan tranquilly.

The twins looked politely disbelieving. Susan gave a slow unruffled smile and carried on reading her library book.

As it turned out, the feast was interrupted by Professor Quirrell staggering in gasping something about trolls, and the students were marched off to their House towers. Lawrie found herself hurrying along next to Harry Potter and Ron Weasley. "What are you doing here?" she asked. "You're Gryffindors."

"Tell you later," said Harry.

Lawrie wasn't really expecting him to; Harry and Ron didn't seem to have a lot of time for any of the Hufflepuffs except Ernie. But as it turned out, he did, though she thought with rather adult scorn that she was probably getting the edited version.

Still, it made a titbit to tell Susan and Nicola. "You know that troll? Ron and Harry vanquished it in a girls' toilet."

"We should ask them to vanquish Marie Dobson next," said Nicola nastily.

Lawrie fell into step beside her. "At least it's Quidditch season soon. Do you think they'd let me commentate? I bet I'd do a better job than Lee Jordan."

"Huh. I hope Lois falls off her broom and _dies_," said Nicola bitterly. "I hope Rowan aims a Bludger straight at her horrible head."

Lawrie said nothing. She felt miserably confused, as if her insides were drying and curling up at the edges. She knew Nicola wouldn't understand, so it was safer to just nod along, and after a while, to join in making silly carefree plans for disposing of Lee Jordan.

Despite herself, she found herself imagining the scene. There was frost on the ground, and clouds of frozen breath from the spectators in bright greens and reds and yellows and blues around the Quidditch pitch. She was, once again, the youngest ever Hufflepuff Chaser - there was Lois, falling off her broom - there was room for Lawrie to dive underneath and catch her...

"Only I wouldn't," said Lawrie aloud, deeply, and to Nicola and Susan's incomprehension. "I'd jolly well let her fall. And I'd let her see I was letting her fall, what's more."

And she swung her satchel, feeling a good deal better.


	8. Chapter 8

The next week, the Quidditch season started, and no one had time to rake over last month's rows concerning Nicola and Lawrie Marlow.

Nicola, who had stalked into the History of Magic classroom with her chin in the air, looked obscurely aggrieved when it became clear that the assembled Hufflepuffs and Slytherins were all talking enthusiastically about feints and catches instead. Marie Dobson crimsoned and became suddenly very interested in her own inkpot, but no one was looking at Marie.

Lawrie boosted herself up onto a desk and hugged her knees for balance. "Do we get time off lessons to watch the matches?" she asked the room in general.

"No, they play at weekends. The first match is always Gryffindor versus Slytherin," said Ernie Macmillan instructively. "I bet Slytherin win. They've won the Cup for the last four years, and they're fielding a very strong team. Watching Flint and Warrington in the air, it's like they're reading each others' minds."

"Quite a trick when neither of them have got a mind to read," said Susan lightly. "I think the Gryffindors might just do it, myself."

Ernie shook his head. "I don't think so. Oh, your Rowan is very good indeed," he made a statesmanlike little nod to Lawrie and Nicola, who returned slightly embarrassed parallel smiles, "but in _my_ opinion Wood doesn't have what it takes to keep the Weasley twins in order. No, I'm sorry, but it'll be Slytherin. Not a doubt about it."

Pansy Parkinson leaned over and pretended to kiss Ernie behind the ear. "I'll give you the bag of Galleons after the match," she said, laughing.

The other Slytherin girls laughed too, Marie joining in honkingly like a seal and carrying on laughing after the others had stopped. All but Tim Keith, who was leaning against the door looking elaborately unconcerned with such childishness as Quidditch. Lawrie looked at her curiously and decided that she wasn't pretty, not with her tanned face and very short-cropped, tussocky black hair, but that brown eyes with green flecks were definitely more _interesting_ than plain old blue.

Ernie hitched himself hastily sideways to avoid Pansy and dropped his satchel. "You only have to look at the averages," he protested. "It's a statistical fact that new players take a while to settle in. Gryffindor lost a Seeker and a Chaser when last year's seventh-years left. Alicia Spinnet's sure to make Chaser, but none of last year's reserves are Seeker material. In my opinion."

"Oh, yes, the new Gryffindor Seeker." Draco Malfoy presented himself beside Lawrie, looking quite unnaturally friendly. Then again, Lawrie supposed, the Slytherins weren't _unfriendly_ in general so much as _clannish_, and p'raps that was just due to the impression they gave of having known each other since they were whacking each other round the head with teddybears in their respective cots. "I heard it might be your sister Ginty. Isn't she supposed to be pretty good?"

"People say so," said Lawrie unwarily. "I don't know whether it _is_ her, though. She didn't get a letter in the holidays or anything." Privately, she knew that Ginty at least had thought it was pretty much a certainty, to the extent of pestering Mrs Marlow unceasingly for a new broom; but she could feel Nicola glaring at the back of her head, and didn't want to start anything that could lead to remarks about all-conquering Marlows.

"People don't. It's all settled after the trials in the second week of term," Ernie informed them.

"Oh. Well, she hasn't said anything about that, either." Lawrie paused. She knew that when things went right Ginty was utterly incapable of _not_ going round radiating an inward glow that would make a fortune for any witch who could bottle it, but as it happened her path and Ginty's hadn't crossed since before Hallowe'en and there was a limit to what one could tell from occasional glances at the Gryffindor table. "I'm not _sure_ it's her," she said again in a spirit of not jinxing things for her sister before they were settled.

"Well, tell her I wish her the best of luck," said Malfoy politely and turned to glare at Crabbe and Goyle, who were making remarks about Ginty that Lawrie was rather glad she couldn't quite hear. It was bad enough having to see the gestures.

"Does everybody have to go to the Quidditch match?" Nicola was asking Susan, who was leaning over the desk behind her.

Susan shook her head. "Most people do, but the Osmans don't go because their religion doesn't think much of witches riding around on brooms showing their legs - you know the Osmans, they're Gryffindors, one's a fourth year and the other one's a seventh - and neither do some of the other Muggleborns. Sally-Ann Perks doesn't, I know that, because she came in at the end of my clarinet lesson and asked Magister Reed if it was all right to use the music-room, and he said if the Snitch flew in through the window and up her euphonium he'd hold her responsible."

"Sally-Ann Perks is never a Muslim," said Nicola, sounding as if she suspected a leg-pull.

"No, but her people do follow _some_ kind of Muggle religion," said Susan earnestly. "Haven't you noticed she wasn't allowed to come to the Hallowe'en feast or anything where people sing hymns, and she got really embarrassed when Lavender Brown was asking when her birthday was, and had to tell her not to send cards to her house because her parents don't agree with that kind of thing?"

"Well, who'd have thought it," said Nicola, only mildly interested.

"What are they going to do in the music-room?" asked Tim Keith, strolling over. "I might go and join them."

"You can't do that," said Goyle offendedly. "You've got your House to support."

"And the so-dear Marlows here have two sisters to support," Tim gave them a bright glancing look, not altogether devoid of malice. "So I suppose we'll all be there freezing on the stands whilst Sally-Ann Perks and the two best-looking boys in Gryffindor share a nice warm music-room. It's enough to make me take up that old-time religion."

Lawrie shrugged crossly and got off the table, feeling prickly and out of sorts but not knowing why. "I just think it's a bit boring, that's all. First years can't be on the teams, so..."

"That's not an absolute rule," observed Ernie heavily. "But in practice, over the last century..."

Professor Binns rose up through the table. "Sit down, sit down," he said in his dry, rustling voice. "Now, I believe last week I asked you to study the terms of the treaty between Gruoch the Unstable and the werebears of Scotland..."

\--

It was a sharp, cold day. Clouds scudded across the sky. The Quidditch stadium was packed. Nicola, Lawrie and Susan sat together in the Hufflepuff stands, wedged between a large seventh-year girl eating toffees on one side and Elizabeth Collins on the other. Elizabeth was taking no interest in the game at all, and appeared to be quietly getting on with some patchwork that she had taken out of a bag on her lap.

"Isn't that awfully fiddly?" asked Nicola politely.

"Oh, no... it's really interesting," said Elizabeth shyly. "I like the names, there are quilt patterns called things like Mariner's Compass and Warlocks In A Basket... there's even one called Chasing the Snitch..."

"I bet you could make one of those and stuff it with feathers before they find the Snitch today," said Susan rather gloomily. "It's just turned into a game of Bash the Rat out there. Flint should have been given a foul."

"So should Pucey," agreed the seventh-year girl, offering her a toffee. "No, pass them along the line, they're Tingle-Be-Gone Toffees, I've got plenty..."

Lawrie sucked her toffee and felt the cold in her mittened hands recede. "Thanks," she said stickily. She turned back to watch the match, feeling a detached and quite unfamily-like admiration for Rowan's unshowy daring.

All at once the game came alive, swinging from scrum to choreography. Lawrie caught a tight cold breath. She nudged Nicola in the side as Rowan caught the Quaffle from Angelina Johnson and darted up the field. Her robe-sleeves belled out behind her, catching the wind like red ribbons, and her blonde hair lifted away from her neck as she flew. Lawrie felt her own neck prickle in sympathy. She watched the Slytherins rise up after her like malign green smoke. Rowan jinked neatly past them and dodged low to get out of the path of a marauding Bludger.

Her feet were almost skimming the frost-rimed grass. Nicola murmured "O-oh," and grasped Lawrie's hand. Lawrie grasped back. Rowan looked round, dandelion-pale hair flying, and pulled her broom sharply skywards in an upward curve like the final flourish of a rollercoaster. The twins held their breath. Around them the stands erupted into a wordless noise that came from the lungs and the throat without any need for words.

Lawrie found herself shouting too, gripping the lacquered edge of the stand. Rowan skimmed past a row of Slytherin spectators - Lawrie swore Goyle tried to foul her by grabbing her robes, but his big hand closed on nothing but air - and seemed to almost float towards the goal. The big Slytherin Keeper, Bletchley, saw what she was doing and dropped towards her like a hawk out of the sky... but it was too late...

"GRYFFINDOR SCORES!" howled Lee Jordan triumphantly through his megaphone. The Gryffindors surged to their feet, cheering and waving banners. Elizabeth Collins gave a polite, perplexed smile and snipped off her thread with some embroidery scissors. Lawrie and Nicola looked at each other, unclasped their hands and let out twin shuddering breaths.

"That was close," said Nicola. "When that thug Bletchley lurched straight at her I thought she'd had it, I can tell you."

"Did you see Goyle?"

"No, what did he do?"

"Very nearly a foul," said Lawrie, pink and breathless with indignation. "I'm surprised Madam Hooch didn't see it..."

The crowds settled down again as the game resumed. There was an extended, messy sequence of feints and tackles towards the Ravenclaw end of the pitch. Lawrie couldn't see much except occasional flailing limbs and a Bludger flying in and out in an eccentric orbit like one of those old diagrams of electrons circling an atom. Bored, she looked over at the Gryffindor stands again.

One of the banners read _Rowan 'Berries' The Opposition_. Another one had a prancing lion and read _Potter For President_. There was no sign at all of Ginty. Lawrie looked up into the sky. The two Seekers were hovering high above, watching each other narrowly, occasionally jinking to and fro. They looked, Lawrie thought, for all the world like two blackbirds with their eye on the same bush.

"D'you think Gin minds?" she asked Nicola tentatively.

Nicola gave her a look that signalled clearly _Gin always minds, just like you, you daft clot._ "I'd hate to be up there, just waiting," she said instead.

"Potter must be pretty good," said the seventh-year girl politely, around another toffee.

"Yeah, like he'd have got that place if he was Harry Smith," said someone on her other side, making Lawrie look surprisedly round at Zacharias Smith, at the end of the row of seats, and wonder whether they were related. "He got put on the team because he's _famous_, didn't he? The Gryffindors must reckon no one'd dare lob a Bludger at the Boy Who Lived."

Cedric Diggory leaned down from the seats above. "No, he really did get the place on merit. I was talking to Oliver Wood."

The person subsided.

Alicia Spinnet took a penalty. Slytherin scored. The Slytherin supporters danced up and down in the stands. Pansy Parkinson and her friends were brandishing a long banner reading _In Like Flint_. Tim Keith, like Ginty, was nowhere to be seen. Susan shaded her eyes and looked up at the Seekers again. "I still think your Ginty might have done better. I'd almost say Potter couldn't control his broom. Look - there he goes - he can't have meant to do that..."

"Madam Hooch would notice, wouldn't she?" asked Lawrie nervously, a prey to secret imaginings about being that high up on a broom that didn't work _with everyone watching_. Perhaps she was quite happy after all _not_ being the youngest ever Hufflepuff Chaser. She sucked her toffee contemplatively. "Nick."

"What?"

"Is that Rowan's usual broom?"

"Huh?"

"Rowan. Is that her Cleansweep 6?"

"How would I know?"

"Ginty was going on about having Rowan's old Cleansweep and Rowan getting a Sycamore Key."

"Well, Gin's not going to need it, is she? She's not even a reserve."

"I wish I had a Sycamore Key," said Susan wistfully. "They don't have the acceleration you'd get out of a Nimbus, but the handling..."

There was a long-drawn-out 'Ohhhh' from the crowd, and then a burst of clapping and cheering. Cedric said earnestly "Oh, well _played_, Potter," and Ernie began cackling excitedly about how something or other hadn't happened since 1796. The twins looked at each other blankly. "What happened?"

"Potter caught the Snitch," said Elizabeth tranquilly.

"Looks as if he nearly swallowed it... you should see Snape's face... good heavens, are his _robes_ on fire?" asked Susan, squinting over at the Slytherin stands. "I suppose he was sitting over a brazier full of salamanders. A lot of wizards do that when they suffer from the cold, though I have to say I thought Professor Snape had more sense."

"I wouldn't want to be the salamanders. I hope they never look up," said Michael Corner disgustedly from his seat next to Zacharias Smith. "Well done Potter, I suppose. Another feather in the cap of the Boy Who Lived. I wish they'd picked Ginty Marlow instead, she's much better looking."

"She should dress up as Potter and go on instead," Zacharias mimed taking off a pair of glasses. "Why, Miss Marlow, you're beautiful..."

"Shut up, you two," said Susan.

Someone started letting off a klaxon over in the Ravenclaw stands. The seventh-year girl got to her feet. "That's one in the eye for Slytherin. Bet they still win the Cup though. Well, see you all at the feast."

"One hundred and seventy to sixty! What a result!" crowed Lee Jordan's voice, joyously distorted, through the megaphone. "And the next match will be Hufflepuff versus Ravenclaw, followed by Ravenclaw versus Slytherin..."

\--

Nicola and Lawrie caught up with Rowan as the Gryffindor team left the pitch. The rest of the team made room for them, smiling in a rather superior way, and one of the Weasley twins offered them each a badge reading _Potter Pulls It Off_. "You press Potter's nose and it squirts people with water. Special offer for fellow twins. Tell all your friends. Hey, I don't suppose you'd mind helping us test some stuff... I mean, if one of you tries something and the other one's the control, that'd be really handy... Come over to the common room, any time."

"Bags me always the control," said Lawrie prudently at the same time as Nicola said "Oh, well, we'd have to ask Professor Sprout," and hurried Lawrie off to the other side of Rowan. The Weasley twins made a chair with their arms and started carrying Harry Potter about on it instead.

"C'ngratulations, Ro," said Lawrie shyly.

"Hmm? Oh, we should have got at least another goal out of that," said Rowan, handing her broom to a star-struck small Gryffindor who was wearing the _Rowan 'Berries' The Opposition_ banner round his shoulders like a cloak. "Yes, take that back to Professor McGonagall and thank her from me, Seamus," she said, sounding, as usual, as if she and the Staff belonged to the same adult world and found it all rather a joke.

Rowan noticed Lois Sanger and some of the rest of the Ravenclaw Quidditch team heading over to congratulate Harry, and took a swift, inconspicuous left turn away round the back of the Astronomy Tower. The twins followed. "There, I _said_ it wasn't her Cleansweep," said Lawrie, giving Nicola a triumphant shove. "What happened to your broom, Rowan?"

"Your guess, as they say, is as good as mine," said Rowan shortly. "It's something I shall _certainly_ be looking into. Though frankly, if everyone shuts up about Quidditch from now until the Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw match at the end of the month I won't mind too much."

Nicola stared at her wide-eyed. "_Really_, Ro?"

"Really," said Rowan darkly, rolling up one sleeve and looking at her cold bluish-white arm as if wondering whether it was going to bruise.

"But..."

"Oh - of course, you two were over at the Hufflepuff Tower and well out of it," Rowan's negligent tone suggested that she couldn't be expected to notice two sisters more or less in the general throng. "None of it's Potter's fault, of course - he's got the makings of a very decent Quidditch player, even if he does share that rather charming junior delusion that rule-breaking will just get him a sherbet lemon and a pat on the head for being such a brave little scamp - but honestly, I could have lived without the procession of idiots in the common room bleating that they thought Gin was on the team and it was all _settled_."

Lawrie made an appropriately interested face. "So everyone _did_ think so?"

They turned the other corner of the tower and came into a rather overgrown courtyard which framed an obelisk that Lawrie thought was probably a war memorial. Some other students, mostly Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs, were standing around in the courtyard chatting. Zacharias Smith, who had been running a book on the outcome of the match, was holding court among his cronies and looking sleek. Lawrie guessed that most people had been betting on Slytherin.

"Virtual certainty," Rowan looked across the courtyard at their sister Ginty, who was chattering in a particularly airy, affected way to a couple of other girls in her year. "She thought so too. But once Potter came along, he was the obvious choice. Gin's the more experienced flyer, but she hasn't got the _nerve_ to be Seeker. If she didn't manage to grab the Snitch in the first five minutes she'd work herself into hysterics and be useless for the rest of the game."

Some Slytherin third-years emerged from an archway at the other side of the courtyard, surrounding Terence Higgs, the Slytherin Seeker, like a bodyguard. When they sighted the Gryffindors they squared their shoulders and practiced looking aggressively unmoved. One of them scuttled off to shove a bag into Zacharias Smith's hand, then returned, proclaiming loudly "First match doesn't matter, everyone knows we'll make it up against Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff..."

Ginty looked round. She detached herself from her friends with much pressing of hands and a quick hug from one of them - an Emma something - who was a Hufflepuff, and ought, Lawrie thought sourly, to know better. She joined the Slytherins instead, attaching herself prettily to Terence Higgs' arm and smiling up at him.

Higgs looked pleased but incredulous. Two of the other Slytherins walked off, but the others stayed, clustering round Ginty and Higgs and talking eagerly. One of them put his cloak over her shoulders.

Rowan went back to looking at the putative bruise on her arm as if the sight of it pleased her a good deal better than Ginty. "I know she's had a very salutary shock, but there are times when I wish she'd just bawl, rather than prancing around making like Unity Mitford,"

"Is Unity Mitford that Slytherin twit who's always following the staff about with big wet eyes like a skinned bushbaby and telling them hard-luck stories about her friends?" asked Nicola. "If I was Snape I'd drown her."

Rowan hurried them off up a draughty flight of steps. Below them, the supporters were still spilling out of the Quidditch ground like so much windblown confetti. Professor Dumbledore was one of the last to leave, accompanying some visitors from the Ministry. "No, that's Unity _Logan_. You are a little philistine," she said without heat.

"I know about the Mitfords," said Lawrie unexpectedly. "They were sisters, like us, and there was a brother but he died, and some of them wrote books. I tried to read one once but Ann took it away from me."

"I'm not surprised. You're far too young."

"Well, I thought someone said they were about ponies."

"That's not the Mitfords, you clot, that's the Pullein-Thompsons," said Nicola, giving her twin a little push, as they emerged up onto a high stone balcony. "When do you play next, Ro?"

"Some time in February, if things go to plan," Rowan opened a door onto a small staircase, which rather unexpectedly led into the Great Hall. "There you go. Make a start on the eats before the rest of your crew show up. I'd better go off and wash, and see whether Madam Pomfrey's got anything for this _lovely_ bruise. Otherwise come your match against Ravenclaw I'll be yellow and blue, and no one will be able to tell who I'm supporting. And I'll tell you something, between now and Valentine's Day I could _really_ do with finding my broom."


	9. Chapter 9

The Hufflepuff versus Ravenclaw match took place at the end of November, when the last leaves were blowing off the trees and winter was beginning to tighten its fingers around the castle. The match was a scrappy, unsatisfactory affair, full of pointless flurries of activity that never seemed to lead to anything much.

"And Davies passes to Sanger," said Lee Jordan in a bored, sing-song tone of voice, "and Professor Snape blows his whistle and stops the game _again_, he seems to have some kind of issue with Chambers, the Hufflepuff Keeper, we'll be here until Christmas at this rate. Professor Snape tells Chambers to stop resting his elbow on the goal hoop and hands out a reprimand for combination Cobbing and Flacking... wonder what you'd call that if it was a single foul, would it be Flabbing, or... sorry, Professor McGonagall, please don't confiscate my megaphone. What's that down the other end of the pitch... I can't quite see..."

"I don't care if it's a fleet of formation Hippogriffs," said Lawrie crossly. "My bones are chilled to the fingers."

Susan delved solemnly into the pocket of her cloak and found an old Quidditch World Cup programme and a stubby pencil. She drew a noughts-and-crosses grid and silently pushed it across to Lawrie. Lawrie grinned and drew a firm cross in the centre. Susan followed up with an O in the top left-hand corner and, after a moment, added a smiley face inside it.

Some time later, there was a long-drawn-out 'Ohhhh' from the Hufflepuff stands and a few scattered, dutiful cheers from the Ravenclaws. Nicola looked up from her book with the distant, rather fierce expression that she always had when surfacing from adventures in mid-Atlantic and asked what the score was.

"Seven games to three, Susan's winning," said Lawrie innocently. "_What_?"

"Our man Monkton caught the Snitch," said Ernie heavily.

Lawrie perked up. "Doesn't that mean we've won?"

"No, Ravenclaw were ahead on points. That last goal of Lois Sanger's pushed them to a hundred and sixty points in front of us," said Ernie indignantly.

"Monkton got let off Divination so that he could do extra Arithmancy, as well," observed a lugubrious fifth-year from the end of the row. "Well, they say you can always tell a born Arithmancer, they're the ones who can't add up."

"It's not _fair_," said Lawrie gloomily, hugging her hands inside her sleeves and watching with disfavour as the Ravenclaw team did a formation victory lap. "I hope after Christmas the Slytherins _slaughter_ them. I'm going to see if I can borrow that _In Like Flint_ banner off Pansy Parkinson if she's made a new one by then."

"Better to make our own, surely," said Nicola haughtily. "We don't want Slytherin cast-offs."

"I'll help paint it if someone else draws it," said Lawrie swiftly and winningly. She turned her back on Nicola's baffled face as they climbed down the steps out of the stands, and skipped off with Susan, feeling cheerful. It wasn't often that she managed to palm off a chore onto Nicola _and make it sound like Nicola's own idea_. Score ten points, she thought, to Lawrence S. Marlow, and no enemy Seeker in sight.

\--

As it turned out, come January the Slytherins did win handily over Ravenclaw. Pleased, surprised and flattered at the cheers from the Hufflepuff stands, they surpassed themselves; whereas the Ravenclaws played a ragged game.

Lois in particular was visibly off form. Lawrie, watching her talking to Roger Davies afterwards, was surprised to find herself feeling not triumphant but faintly sickish, like the last days of flu when you've stopped being an interesting invalid and turned into a nuisance. It was no fun gloating over someone who was so plainly miserable. Which was strange, Lawrie thought - she'd always assumed that was the best _time_ to gloat - but there it was.

It felt wrong to be looking down on Lois like this. It felt like _bullying_, Lawrie thought bemusedly, though that was an utterly ridiculous word to use when she was First Year and Lois was Fifth Year. Lois should always be bright and lithe and indestructible and hated, and the world would be back in joint. Lawrie looked across at Nicola, who didn't seem to be having any moral qualms about _her_ particular brand of grim satisfaction.

"If I was Roger Davies I'd throw her off the team," said Nicola. "The rest of the Ravenclaws were pretty feeble as well, don't you think?"

"Yes, now we get to be the House who were beaten by the team full of feeble people," said Ernie gloomily.

"Oh, that's not fair, when Lois is on form she's as good as Bole, or Rowan Marlow..."

"Not nearly as good," said Nicola swiftly, and so savagely that no one contradicted her.

As the spectators poured out of the stands and began to cross the snow back towards the castle, Draco Malfoy wandered up to Lawrie, Nicola, Elizabeth and Susan and gave them his friendliest grin.

"Thanks for the support. We'll do the same for you when you're up against the Gryffindors," he offered. "I'll get Crabbe and Goyle to dress up as badgers and do a dance."

Nicola looked at him as if she wasn't sure this was a compliment. "You deserved to win," she said politely but chillingly. "Higgs was really good."

Pansy Parkinson came up and wrapped the trailing ends of her green and silver scarf around Draco's neck in a friendly way. "At least _our_ Seeker doesn't need to wear glasses." she agreed in a nudging tone of voice. "Amazing what a Hawksight Potion can do,"

"Taking potions before a Quidditch match is Crumping," said Susan stiffly. "It's been forbidden since 1687."

"Oh, I was only joking," said Pansy quickly. Nicola looked at her as if she wasn't sure whether to believe her or not. Pansy smiled glossily, disentangled her scarf and hurried off to join a clump of her friends who were clustered by the bank where the snow had been swept off the path, making snowballs out of the brown scurf and rime of trodden snow.

Draco remained, clasping his hands behind his head and smiling gently as he walked. He really did look like Peter when he did that, Lawrie thought irrelevantly, and the thought made her smile at him even though on the whole Peter was among her least favourite relatives. Nicola gave her a sisterly look and walked slightly faster to catch up with Justin, Ernie and Eloise Midgen.

"Did your Rowan ever find her broom?" asked Draco.

Lawrie shook her head. "No, she's still borrowing Professor McGonagall's. She says it's a pain remembering that it handles differently, and she doesn't want to use it too long because she'll get used to it and then once she's got the Cleansweep back _that'll_ feel wrong," she explained, not terribly coherently. "Why?"

He regarded her with pale eyes under the thin, vulnerable whiteness of his lashes. "It's just that some of the Gryffindors have been really quite... secretive lately, as if they've got something hidden away. You know what some of them are like, they think it's all jolly hearty pranks until someone gets eaten by a dragon."

"Who got eaten by a dragon?" asked Lawrie sceptically.

Draco's eyes glittered. "Well, there are things I could tell you about what Hagrid keeps under his bed... But I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they hadn't hidden Rowan's broom somewhere. I mean, who else would be able to get hold of it? And they're just the kind of people to think that kind of thing's funny. _You're_ not, nor your sister. The Sorting Hat could see that."

Lawrie nodded, lulled by the praise. "So where do you think they've hidden Rowan's broom?"

Draco leaned forward to whisper. Lawrie jumped backwards like a misfired firework and bumped into a snow-lapped statue of some past Headmistress or other. "The _Charms Corridor_?"

Several people looked round. Susan kindly took Lawrie by the collar and started slapping the snow off her. "Even the Gryffindors wouldn't be fool enough to mess about with the Charms Corridor. It's out of bounds," she said sensibly.

Draco shrugged. "You don't think that'd be an attraction to them?" he asked and went off to direct operations by the snowbank.

The Hufflepuffs looked at each other. "He's got a point," said Ernie as the two groups pooled together again. "The Weasley twins keep enchanting snowballs to fly at the back of Professor Quirrell's head, and I know he seems like a bit of a wet mess, but I bet he knows tons about the Dark Arts. You wouldn't catch a _normal_ person doing that."

Susan looked across at the Slytherins. Crabbe seemed to be attempting to embed a toad in one of his snowballs. "That's Neville Longbottom's toad," she said in a cross, resigned voice. "Honestly, you'd think he'd keep an eye on it. He really is a bit hopeless."

"Do you think we should try and get it back?" asked Lawrie nervously, not relishing the idea of a barrage of snowballs from the massed Slytherins.

"Oh, no, there's Katie Bell dealing with it." Susan looked worried. "Don't listen to Draco, Lawrie. He's got a right bee in his bonnet about the Gryffindors."

"He has, too," agreed Elizabeth Collins unexpectedly.

Lawrie and Susan both looked round in surprise, since Elizabeth venturing an opinion was about as unexpected as hearing a remark from Neville's toad. "I saw him talking to a _staff_ about it." Elizabeth enlarged.

"Who?"

Elizabeth looked pink. "Professor Snape."

"Well, I know if I started cozying up to Professor Sprout and whining about how hard-done-by we were because the Ravenclaws can count better than that boffin Monkton, she'd send me away with a flea in my ear," said Susan roundly. "And I bet Professor Snape would do exactly the same, if he's any kind of Head of House at all, which he _is_, because he wouldn't _be_ Head of House if Dumbledore didn't think very highly of him."

"Well, Heads of House have to have been in that house as students," argued Lawrie. "Maybe there _wasn't_ anyone else from Slytherin who'd come back to teach."

"Professor Sinistra was a Slytherin, if she's the Q.J Sinistra who won that award for Outstanding Astronomy that they keep in the entrance hall, and so was Magister Reed," Ernie informed them. "Magister Reed was a _prefect_ which I don't believe Professor Snape was, though..."

Elizabeth went even pinker, but actually managed to interrupt Ernie, something that she'd never been known to do in her entire career at Hogwarts up to that point.

"_I saw them_," she insisted. "I had to go and pick up _You Can Breed Streelers For Fun And Profit_ from the library - Madam Pince finally got it in on an inter-library loan from Pretoria - and Professor Snape came striding along the corridor in that way he does, you know, all _even my robes are more tormented than other people's, you can see little howling faces in the edges if you squint_, with Draco Malfoy bobbing along behind him like a little blond cork complaining about the Gryffindors. And Tim Keith sauntered up and said 'But you'd sooner be our Head of House than theirs, wouldn't you? Think of the reflected glory.' And Professor Snape just said 'Hmm, yes, the Gryffindors and their _reflected_ glory' and very nearly smiled."

Lawrie gazed at her in respectful silence and tried to work out whether that was the most words she'd ever heard Elizabeth utter at once.

"I don't get it," said Ernie heavily. "Does he mean the Gryffindors look into mirrors too much?"

"I'd look into mirrors if I looked like your Ginty," sighed Eloise Midgen. Lawrie and Nicola both looked embarrassed.

The first snowball from the Slytherin redoubt plopped at Susan's feet. "I bet that was one of Theodore Nott's, he throws like a..." Susan was saying in unimpressed tones as a second snowball smacked neatly into the back of her knee. Nicola and Lawrie each took one of Susan's arms and hurried her away.

Snowballs smacked down around them as they ran. One compacted handful of snow caught Lawrie glancingly across the forehead, turning the world to ice-splinters between her eyelashes as if she was running through a blizzard. Breathless and giggling, they fetched up behind another snowbank and started planning a counterattack. Lawrie laughed so hard she could hardly catch her breath as she counted the snowballs and stuffed them into her pockets. For once, she completely and uncomplicatedly loved being at school.

"All the same," she said to Nicola as they strolled back towards the Hufflepuff Tower and the prospect of steaming baths and mugs of hot chocolate with ginger, "I know you wouldn't believe Draco Malfoy if he said the sun rose in the west and set in the east..."

"No, I wouldn't, because it rises in the east and sets in the west," said Nicola smartly.

Lawrie shrugged. She never had any qualms about admitting when she found things impossible to remember, mostly because she secretly believed that no one else could remember them either and they were all just bluffing. "I think there might be something in it. You know what the Gryffindors are like about being brave."

"I know what the Slytherins are like about sticking together," said Nicola cynically. "Unless we pull something really amazing out of the hat when we play Gryffindor, it'll be Slytherin against Gryffindor in the final, and I wouldn't put it past Draco Malfoy to be trying to... to fix Rowan's wagon, somehow."

"If it was him behind it, he'd have pinched Harry Potter's broom, not Rowan's," urged Lawrie. "You know how he never shuts up about how _unfair_ it was."

"Yes, isn't it annoying when people do that?" countered Nicola swiftly.

Lawrie looked brassily serene. Nicola sighed. "Oh, all _right_, if you can find a night when Peeves isn't hovering about the place like a bad smell. If he grabs my nose and yells 'Got your conk!' one more time I'm going to see if I can't talk the Fat Friar into _exorcising_ him."

"I bet it's been tried," said Lawrie gloomily. "Anyway, I don't think ghosts can exorcise each other. It might get rid of the Friar as well, and then we'd have to have some other ghost. Probably the White Lady who hangs around Professor Sprout's greenhouses, you know, the one with the gardening gloves and her head in a basket. I don't know how anyone can bear to keep their head all jumbled up with some green beans and a pair of secateurs, even if they are all made of ectoplasm."

Nicola leaned companionably against her as they climbed the stairs. "At least then we'd be one up on Gryffindor, we'd have a properly headless ghost, even if she does creep up on people in Herbology, tell them she thinks they're coming down with the Creeping Spot and offer to prune off their fingers. Lawrie..."

"What?"

"Is it _really_ worth getting mixed up in whatever Malfoy's planning, just to get one over on the Gryffindors? I mean, I like Ernie and Elizabeth and people. I certainly wouldn't swap them for Ann, or that conceited mob of Ginty's. We're not _still_ thinking that the Hat put us in the wrong house, are we?"

Lawrie blinked. It was true that she hadn't given the Lawrie-who-might-have-been-in-Gryffindor any thought for a while; at first she had pushed her away into a bruised place at the back of her mind, and then, gradually, the bruised place had stopped being of much interest. "It's nothing like that," she said stoutly. "I just think we should find Rowan's broom, that's all."

Nicola shrugged and shoved suddenly ahead of her. "Bags I first bath!"

"_Mean_!" shrieked Lawrie indignantly, scudding after her down the panelled hall to the bathrooms. "Honestly, once I'm a Prefect, I'm never going to let you pretend to be me and use the Prefects' bathrooms! _I_ always bag first! Slow down! Nicola - Nicola!"


	10. A Wand With Sixteen Strings, Part Ten

"Bloody _hell_," said Nicola almost reverently, looking at the enormous dog that was lying there, drooling gently from three muzzles which all seemed particularly well-furnished with teeth. "Whatever you do, Susan, don't stop playing the clarinet."

"I thought you said you liked all animals except anteaters," offered Lawrie helpfully from the back.

"Right now I'd swap that creature for a three-headed anteater sight unseen," said her twin ferociously. "And it's asleep _on the trapdoor_, in case you hadn't noticed that, and we need to come up with something before Susan runs out of breath. She's not playing the didgeridoo, you know."

Susan mimed something with her eyebrows and played the first bar of 'Waltzing Matilda'. The dog snored. Lawrie poked hopefully at a floorboard with her foot. The floorboard declined to creak enticingly, flip upwards at one end, or perform any of the other tricks known to floorboards of fiction.

Nicola squinted down the corridor. "There's room for one of us to squeeze past it."

"It's not going to be me, I can tell you that for nothing," said Lawrie prudently. "I'm not running away from that thing. I've got a bone in my leg."

"No - look - you go right to the end, you'll be safe there, once it's off the trapdoor I'll sing whilst Susan drops down the trapdoor, and then once she's down safely she can start playing the clarinet again."

Lawrie fisted hands on hips and glared. "It's not _fair_. We've got _identical larynxes_. I don't see why you can sing and I can't," she said, eyeing the dog's sweaty flank with the greatest of scepticism.

"P'raps someone tried to throttle you when you were a baby," said Nicola helpfully. "I can think of any number of suspects. We'd better get on with it, someone's bound to hear the music eventually."

"When I find out which of the Gryffindors did this I'm going to break that harp over their _head_," said Lawrie. "If I find out this is somebody's rat that the Weasley twins Transfigured, or something..."

"Wouldn't that be better than the other thing?"

Lawrie looked at her sister, then at Susan, then at the dog. It still _looked_ peacefully asleep. Lawrie really didn't want to get any closer and find out. She felt as if someone had cast a Jelly-Legs Jinx on her. She inched, cautiously, a couple of steps closer.

One of the heads shifted fractionally. Lawrie froze, reminded horribly of other things with skulls and teeth that size. Bulls, and lions, and... She managed another step. She closed her eyes and walked another two steps like that, then hastily opened them again when she felt wet, damp breath on her leg. Tears quivered behind her eyelids. Usually, when she said she was scared, that was enough and she didn't have to do it. She had had absolutely no practice in doing it anyway.

Lawrie closed her eyes again, sucked in all the breath she could muster and managed, by dint of imagining what it would be like to have Ginty or Peter or someone turn up and see her like this, to squeeze between the expanding bellows of the dog's flank and the rough stone wall. She pelted for the other end of the corridor, heart hammering, and pulled out her wand.

Susan stopped playing.

Lawrie took a breath. For a horrible moment no sound came out of her throat, only a weak whistling noise. The dog snuffed around. Nick and Susan were far closer to it than Lawrie was... the dog would smell them first...

For a black vertiginous moment, that was a _good_ thing.

Then Lawrie found her breath. "You repellent drooling object," she found herself saying in a slick, greasy voice that only had a very small squeak of terrified laughter at the edges of it. "You misbegotten morlock of the canine breed. If I required proof that three heads are _not_ better than one, I only need glance at Potter and his cronies. I have no need of a demonstration from _you_."

The dog turned and growled in thirds. It began to stalk stiff-leggedly towards her. The growling shook the floorboards and the stone wall behind her. Or perhaps it was Lawrie herself shaking. She couldn't tell.

"There are already enough dunderheads among my students who don't have the sense not to piddle up the walls. You are entirely surplus to requirements. I am sure that if I asked you to concoct a simple Necrophilus Draft you would bury the bones instead of grinding them..." she improvised in Professor Snape's voice. The dog broke into a run.

And stopped. And laid three heads on two paws, and began to snore again.

"... venite, venite in Bethlehem  
Natum videte, regem Angelorum  
Venite adoremus, venite adoremus  
Venite adoremus, Do - o - minum,"

Lawrie opened her eyes and looked at her sister. Nicola was looking aggravatingly choirboy-like, as she always did when she sang. The dog let out a whuffling sigh and collapsed heavily sideways. Lawrie tiptoed very cautiously back past it.

There was a thump and a papery-sounding scrabble from down the trapdoor, and the light of a torch; and then a triumphant slither of notes on the clarinet that might or might not have been intended for a fanfare. Lawrie peered downward. It sounded like Susan was rather a long _way_ down. Nicola made a small noise indicative of what she thought of sisters who always looked before they leapt, and jumped neatly past her.

The trapdoor shut after them. Nicola shouted some spell or other to cushion their fall. Black and yellow sparks in bubbles raced up past Lawrie, shimmering faintly in the gloom. Lawrie landed and bobbed a few inches above the floor - it felt _most_ peculiar - put her feet on the ground and stood up.

It smelt dank and vaguely greenhouse-like in the darkness. Susan was waving a torch at a very large clump of greenery which seemed to be huddled up in one corner. "Devil's Snare," she explained cheerfully. "There used to be a patch of it at the end of my Granddad's garden. We called it Igor, because you had to break out the torches and pitchforks to make it disgorge the shed."

"We haven't got a pitchfork," said Nicola dubiously. "It seems scared enough of your torch. What are you doing with a torch, anyway? I thought batteries didn't work in the Wizarding World."

"No more they don't," said Susan placidly. "Not for long, anyway. I swapped this one with Hermione for a set of Fingerlights - she wanted them so that she could read in bed."

"Why didn't you just bring the Fingerlights?"

"Because this is a cool Muggle thing," said Susan and blushed. The plant in the corner tucked up some more outlying tendrils with a rustling sound. Lawrie gave it a dubious look. "What if the batteries give out?"

"Oh, it'll be fine, this one's only a baby compared to Igor," said Susan largely. "Look, there's a sort of stone passageway."

Nicola gave the passageway a narrow look, obviously trying to work out where it fitted in the castle's topography. It wasn't any part of the second floor that Lawrie had ever seen. Perhaps they had all fallen further than they thought. It was hard to tell in the dark. Lawrie told herself firmly that she was _never_ going to read Alice In Wonderland again; though she'd never liked it much, anyway, bits of it were too horribly dreamlike and the poetry sounded like grown-ups making pointless grown-up jokes.

"I think we must be somewhere under the Slytherin bathrooms," Nicola decided finally.

Lawrie hugged herself for warmth. "I'd sooner stay here and have tea with the dog and the Devil's Snare than wade through Goyle's old bathwater," she said, pitching her voice to sound plucky yet pathetic in the hope that someone would take pity on her. Possibly Susan might have some chocolate about her person, she often did, though she usually said 'For medicinal purposes' whilst handing it out in a way that made Lawrie think that Susan's father too was prone to say that about brandy.

"Fine. You stay here on your own, then," said Nicola impatiently.

"I didn't _mean_ it," wailed Lawrie, hurrying after her. Susan propped the torch carefully on the floor facing the plant. It lit a narrow slice of the floor, looking, to Lawrie's unwanted imagination, horribly like the skylight in an oubliette. Lawrie hesitated. The plant shuffled. Above her, she could hear something that was either the dog's breathing or one of the other sounds the castle made at night. Perhaps it was the castle itself breathing. It certainly sounded loud enough.

The stone passageway let out into a high chamber filled with weird tiny metallic birds which clinked slightly as they flew. Lawrie looked up at them suspiciously, wondering whether they bit. Nicola rifled through a pile of brooms. "_Yes!_ Rowan's Cleansweep!"

"Good," said Lawrie, feeling, for once, undeservedly lucky. "Let's get out of here. This place is completely mad. Do you think Dumbledore's planning to open some kind of wizarding theme park?"

Nicola giggled. "They could turn the greenhouses into Professor Sprout's Wild Jungle, and have lots of waxworks in the dungeons of people Snape's poisoned, and a helter-skelter in the Astronomy Tower."

"And a rollercoaster on the roof!"

"A rollercoaster on the roof would be _brilliant_!" said Susan enthusiastically. "They've got one at the Sleekeasy's factory. It's part of the production line."

Nicola and Lawrie looked at each other, and then at her. "Mad," said Lawrie, again, with feeling. "All of them. Quite mad."

\--

"It is _weird_, you know," said Lawrie to Nicola at the end-of-year feast, as the red and gold banners waved gently overhead and the Fat Friar strolled up and down the table clapping people on the back and pulling crackers with them. "I mean, it was _us_ that got Rowan's broom back so that they won the match, but it was Gryffindor who got the glory."

"_Glory_," said Nicola scornfully. "Don't be such an ass. We were lucky to get away without anyone finding out."

"And then Gryffindor won the House Cup," said Lawrie, licking a dribble of syrup of the bottom of her spoon as she tried to work it out in her mind. "But Gryffindor were behind _us_ before Dumbledore started giving points to Ron and people. They had three hundred and twelve, we had three hundred and fifty-two, Ravenclaw had four hundred and twenty-six..."

"I know how many Ravenclaw had," said Nicola.

Lawrie eyed her dubiously, supposing Nicola was still feeling excoriated by Rowan's remarks, none of which had included _Thank you, dear twins, for getting me my broom back._ They had started with _You pair of little idiots_ and got steadily worse. The only good thing that had come out of it, as far as Lawrie could see, was that Rowan hadn't told Karen, which she very easily might have done; and _that_ was only, as Rowan told them, because it was the end of Karen's final term anyway and there was no sense sending her into a flap.

"You're not still sore at Lois, are you?" Lawrie asked experimentally. "Because when you think about the help she gave us with flying..."

"But I don't," said Nicola unanswerably. "I think about the Charms Club outing."

"Well, the Ravenclaws look sicker than mud, anyway, considering that they were second before and they're third now," said Lawrie, casting a glance across at Meg Hopkins, who was looking as if her world had exploded. "But it was _us_ who got the broom back so that Rowan could win that match, and she _did_, and Gryffindor _still_ wouldn't have come first if Dumbledore hadn't decided to start giving out points for playing chess. _Chess!_ Peter's been playing chess for _years_ and he's _much_ better than you are, and no one gives him points for it,"

Nicola glared at her but did not dispute this, since Peter's being able to play chess better than her was just one of the world's constants like Lawrie being able to ride better. "So _what_?"

"So Hufflepuff came last," said Lawrie sadly. "Three hundred and fifty-two points, right at the bottom."

"At least Marie Dobson's stopped smirking all over her horrible face," said Nicola. "It was worth cheering Harry Potter and his smug crew, just for that."

"Professor Sprout says we're brilliant eccentrics," offered Susan helpfully from the other side of the table. "Though she said a bit more of the brilliant and less of the eccentric would come in handy next year, if it doesn't strain our little brain cells too much."

"We're still last," said Lawrie gloomily. "If someone had said to me, on the train when we were coming here, because of you Gryffindor'll win the House Cup, I'd have been _really pleased_. And now I'm here, and it has, and I'm not."

"But no one did, did they?"

"No. But they _might_ have done."

Nicola put her spoon down in her bowl and looked exasperated. "Oh, Lal. Stop _thinking_ about it, can't you?

But Lawrie continued to think about it, right through the rest of that day, and on the train, all the way home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alas, the mystery of _why_ Rowan's broom got borrowed will have to be filed, like so many things, under 'why does Dumbledore do anything?'
> 
> Lines quoted from carol _Adeste Fideles_.

**Author's Note:**

> The Marlows belong to the estate of Antonia Forest. The Hogwarts setting and characters belong to J.K Rowling. Some quotations from _Autumn Term_ by Antonia Forest, for purposes of sincere homage.


End file.
